52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 6: Favorite Name

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

Oh, to pick a favorite name among my ancestors or my children’s ancestors, would be like choosing a favorite child. Each of my children are favorites but in different ways.

Surnames

Now, I have favorite surnames that are nice to put into search boxes because the search returns are small in number, such as:

• COOR
• GLEESON
• GORRELL
• HORK
• HUTSON
• LUNDQUIST

But then that really depends on the locality or database being searched. Looking for COOR in Copiah County, Mississippi brings up lots of COOR families. Search for them in Erath County, Texas only brings up a few.

I have least favorite names, but there are just too many of them:

• JONES
• SULLIVAN
• JOHNSTON
• WELCH
• DAVEY

But like the list above, if searching in a very small, specific place, in a specific time period, the search results might be small enough to be able to work through with even these common surnames.

First Names

Now for some favorite first names.  I probably have more Anna or Elizabeth names in my database than any other female names. For male names, William or John probably top the list. I like Ebenezer and have a few of them. The funniest nickname I have is for Oral Dotterage Johnston, who was called “Pig” as a nickname. There was an article written about him in the Comanche Chief  29 November 1979. He was my great-grandfather’s little brother.

When I was young, about in middle school, I used to make lists of my favorite first names. I don’t remember if these were lists for future babies, or just names I liked. I would work through the alphabet picking one or two names for each letter that I liked. Here is a possible example of what a list might have looked like for both boy and girl names (who knows where those lists ended up):

A: Andrew, Anna

B: Benjamin, Bethany

C: Christopher, Charlotte

D: David, Daphne

E: Eric, Elizabeth

F: Francisco, Freda

G: Geoffrey, Greta

H: Hernán, Henrietta

I: Ian, Isabelle

J: Joaquin, Josephine

K: Keith, Katherine

L: Laurens, Liese

M: Martin, Margaret

N: Nathaniel, Nicola

O: Oliver, Olivia

P: Patrick, Pauli

Q: Quentin, Quinn

R: Raul, Robin

S: Sean, Shawn

T: Tomás, Theresa

U: Ugo, Ursula

V: Vincent, Victoria

W: William, Wendy

X: Xavier, Xeres

Y: Yves, Yvonne

Z: Zeke, Zoe

For my own children, I named my first child, Elizabeth and my second child, Margaret. Andrew and Patrick were possible boy’s names.

Other names on the list found their way into stories I have written, such as Hernán, Nathaniel, Oliver, Joaquin , Theresa, Freda, Liese, and Olivia.

Thinking up names by lists have also helped me go to sleep at night when my brain won’t shut down. Instead of counting sheep, I count names, letter-by-letter, and usually fall asleep before I get to the hard letters at the end.

Have you ever made of lists of names?

Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.