By DONNA MURRAY ALLEN
Published September 16, 2004
Oh those crazy celebrities and the goofy names they give their kids. Frank Zappa named two of his offspring Dweezil and Moon Unit. Actors Casey Affleck and Summer Phoenix chose Indiana August for their newborn. And then there's Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter, Apple. Throughout history, parents have bestowed their offspring with offbeat names.
In the late 1800s, two women on my family tree were named Indiana. Two were called Missouri. A great-uncle's middle name was Lemon. A reader told me she had noticed an abundance of women named Mourning in the Kentucky-Tennessee area. One woman was called Mourning Pigg. In Maryland in the late 1800s, More than one man was named Frisby.
Anyone who isn't thrilled with his name can change it. Or go by a middle name. Baptismal names may replace given names and vice versa. Nicknames may be contrived by family and friends or selected by the individual. The vast possibilities may vex researchers trying to determine if Uncle Bill had one wife who used Polly and Mary interchangeably or whether he was married twice. Mary, Molly and Polly were used synonymously on old census rolls, as were Sadie, Sudie and Sarah.
Dianna Suratt from Palm Harbor has run across Mattie (Martha), Jennie (Virginia), Jean (Imogene), Minnie (Wilhemena) and Harry (Henry) in her research. And there's always Dick (Richard), Hetty (Henrietta), Connie (Cornelius) and Jack or Jock (John).
There is sometimes no way to ferret out the given name when the nickname bears no relationship to it. I could vote before I knew that my cousin Bonnie's legal name was Phyllis. I thought her sister's nickname, Teeny, was a derivative of Tina. Her real name was Mary Lou.
Their mother spent two years trying to convince the Social Security Administration that Mae Regina Hampshire and Mary Jane Shelley were the same person. She was baptized in New Jersey under the latter name. She started going by Mae when she was a teenager because "it was sexier." By then she had moved to Pennsylvania. Then she married John Hampshire. She told me this story when she was near her 97th birthday.
Nearly every ethnic group has naming traditions. On the Internet, try a search phrase such as "Norwegian naming patterns (traditions)" or visit a library to find out about them. German immigrants in the 1700s and 1800s, for instance, named their children at birth but later gave them baptismal names. At that point, the birth name became the middle name. That's why one family might have four boys named Johannes and three girls named Maria.
Let's say a child was named Michael at birth. At his baptism he was given the name Johannes. From that point on, he would be known as Johannes Michael. It worked the same with girls. Clarissa might become Maria Clarissa.
Another custom that was popular before the mid 1900s was to name a newborn after a deceased sibling. You might find an Ebenezer Johnson, age 3, on the 1870 census with his parents Jane and Tobias Johnson. On the 1880 census, Jane and Tobias still have one son named Ebenezer, but his age is given as 2. In this situation, it is likely that the first Ebenezer died between 1870-1880 and the Johnsons gave a new son the same name.
Homesteading banner site
If you have difficulties finding the banners portraying descendants of homesteaders, try this site: www.nps.gov/home/legacies2.htm
-- Read past Donna Murray Allen columns online at www.sptimes.com Type "Donna Murray Allen" in the search box. You can write to Allen c/o Floridian, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731, or e-mail her at rootscolumn@yahoo.com Her Web site: www.rootsdetective.com includes information on classes and lectures. Allen welcomes your questions about genealogy and will respond to those of general interest in future columns.
