When I was a kid in high school, and for a few years later the Reader’s Digest ran regular columns on WORDS and NAMES, and thankfully there are still resources like that around, and they’re just a click away on the internet—you just have to be savvy on how to find them.

NAMES, so far as people are concerned used to mean something, or perhaps more clearly defining what the individual did -- silversmith, baker, turner or a miller (craftsmen in silver or made bread or was a wood-turner or owned a flour mill, just to suggest a few trades). Perhaps wrongly assumed as a generalization, the Jewish person usually could be tagged because of his name. Levin, or Levinson, or Levi? Goldsmith? And it could well be that later generations never gave it a thought as to why they had a name like Goldsmith. Naturally the people who bought or traded from these “root surnames” had their own roots but somehow their origins are obfuscated by the more predominant names.

Long, Short, Black, Brown, White, Lavender, Baker and Barber are a few more “American” names that might well be names brought over from “the old country” as they used to say. It has also been suggested, when the immigrants filtered through Ellis Island in that boiling pot of nationalities, that if the interviewer had trouble understanding a Polish, Czech or Slovak name the person behind him might have been so bound to become an American that when asked his name, could have said, “Same as his” pointing to the person in front of him just so he could get beyond the huge lines of people. Some names, also, became anglicized for practical or personal reasons because the English (American?) pronunciation was just not, shall we say, proper?

My wife’s maiden name was STEEL. For whatever reason, when any of her relatives in the previous years who “left home” and worked in the big city took the liberty of adding an “E” to their name – the plain STEEL name may have looked a little too plain and they thought the “E” might had some class to their name. The story that circulated in our town about the name STILL is interesting. There was a schoolteacher in our high school with that name, and he had a brother who was “in radio” in Columbus and he went by the name Bert Stille – pronounced Stillay. Does have a bit different ring (of importance) doesn’t it? The popular brand of chain saws is close, STIHL, but when pronounced with an accent it can almost sound like there is an E in there someplace. People in show business were often encouraged to take on a different name and some were just “stage names” while others were literally changed to a legal name for whatever reason

So far we have been assigning importance to surnames but that “first” name might have just as interesting derivation. One thing for sure, “first” names are not that old with the human race. The joke that usually elicits a laugh is of the brother-in-law who named his sister’s twin babies. The father of the babies had been away at the crucial time of picking a name, so the story goes, and was told when he came back, “Your wife’s brother named the twins!” “Oh no!” he thought and anxiously he asked what he named them. “Well, he named the girl Deniece." “Wow,” he thought, that’s not bad, and then, as customarily waiting for the other shoe to drop, the informant said, “And he named the boy, Denephew.” My wife has a two-name arrangement, Norma Jean, and it is sometimes possible to come close to guessing what year a person was born by their names! “Norma Jean” was one of the popular “girl” names in the years around 1932. Another idea was to name a child after a Hollywood star, like Brigitte, Rory or Troy, or one of the hundreds of other stars popular when the babies were born. Boys with my name, William, John or Joe and girls with Mary, Elizabeth and Ruth learn to be satisfied with a name that has been around for centuries—maybe thousands of years!

There was even the possibility during the middle ages that they didn’t go to the trouble of naming a child because of the plagues and diseases and the child might not live that long so why bother naming them. If that sounds cruel, I suppose you had to live in that time to appreciate it. Some names in other circles of civilization, especially American, liked their names so well (or could it be they were not too good a thinking of a new name) they simply added “Junior” or used Roman numerals to indicate the child was the second person by that name, or the third or fourth. Parts of America even became trickier, and named a boy, John Boy – you can’t help but wonder if they were not sure if it was a boy or girl, nah, no one is that confused. “John-Girl”, no that couldn’t be! A family I grew up with had seven (yes, seven) boys. Walter, Kline, Erston, Shirley, Ray, James and Frank. Whoops? SHIRLEY? Yes, and don’t you imagine he learned how to fight real good in school with a name like that? He still goes by that name and I imagine he is rather proud of that name now. He had a great Mom & Dad and just keeping such a first name ought to be proof of his respect for his parents!

Where are we going with all this? Anywhere you want to, I suppose and who knows, maybe there might be some other twists to this subject and more names might come up later. But one thing for sure, I would guess that whatever name a person had, you can be sure that any parent wants, more than anything else, that their child honors their name. Parents might be disappointed and even embarrassed if their son or daughter, or grandchildren ever do anything to dishonor and disgrace the family name.

What story is in your name?

THE WORDWRIGHT