Confusion is almost guaranteed when a family insists upon using the same first name in multiple generations. Let’s say a man named John has six sons, including one named John. All of the sons, in turn, have a son named John. The result is six first cousins, a grandfather, and a father all with the same name. There needs to be a way to tell them apart.
“I tell ya’, life ain’t easy for a boy named Sue.”
While he laments his name in the Johnny Cash song, “A Boy Named Sue,” he’s not alone—there are plenty of unusual names out there. Here are just a few, both surnames and given names that I’ve encountered in years of family histor y research:
Colorful.
An introduction to the method behind the seeming madness of patronymics.
Patronymics. It’s the kind of word that makes people flinch—particularly people trying to trace their Scandinavian family roots. Some people don’t know what patronymics are, others have a vague idea, and a few think they have the system down. But even those few may misunderstand what patronymics are really all about.
Just what drives us to name a rose a rose.
Someday, when he’s a little older, Harry Wait will find out just where his name came from.
He’ll recognize that he was named Harry after his grandfather, which is true, and his great-grandfather before that. But someday Harry’s father, Andrew, will explain that Harry’s not a third but a fourth.
When and how other countries celebrate their own version of Thanksgiving.
Think Thanksgiving is simply an American tradition? It’s not. Throughout history, every culture and every land had celebrated the year’s bountiful harvest. While customs and rituals have changed over time, each of these festivals and celebrations still unite families and nations.
“Grandma, what am I?” I used to ask while bouncing about her culinary kingdom, the farmhouse kitchen, while Grandma multi-tasked, keeping the woodstove going and tossing a pinch of this and a dash of that into a big bowl.
Not who but what. I wanted to know our ethnicity.
“You’re a mess,” Grandma would say, her hazel-green eyes twinkling.
Besides conserving metal, paper, and rubber products, during World War II, people worldwide were expected to do their part on the home front through conserving food.
In America, beginning in 1942, families were issued coupon books containing stamps, both red and blue, that correlated to specific types of items.
My near death experience began as whimsy.
Six feet under Fillmore County soil, my Minnesota territorial relatives were resting in peace. I dutifully paid respects to them each Memorial Day and other days in between. But I longed for a larger picture, about 826 square miles to be exact—I envisioned myself a tombstone tourist visiting every Fillmore County cemetery.
It’s 1825 and our ancestors in America are enjoying some relaxing family time on a summer evening. The pre-teens don’t have personal DVD players. The teenagers aren’t grooving to their iPods. Mom isn’t chattering on the phone. Dad isn’t staring at the television. And absolutely no one is surfing the Web.
Ten years doesn’t sound like a long time. But in the last ten years, we’ve seen tremendous changes in how we approach family history—the Internet, digital cameras, online communities, e-mail, faster and more accessible scanning technology. So what will the future—even just the next ten years—bring to our pasts?
