What’s Your Name?

What’s in your name? What I am asking is do you know where your name came from and do you like it? I hear a lot of people speak of how they hate their name while other folks absolutely love theirs, but where did those names come into play?

Back in the day people named their children after their ancestors, a male child is born so he is given his paternal Grandfathers name, next male is named after the maternal Grandfather, the first daughter is given the paternal Grandmothers name, and so on and so on until they ran out of Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles to name the kids after, now this is not an exact science but it is a pattern I have noticed while researching my family.

Jimmy is a nickname for James, I was given the same name as my Father, his Grandfather was also named James so it appears we are somewhat on track in my family research so far, I have twenty men with the name of James who carry my last name in the family so far, and I still haven’t gotten all the kids filled in for some as of yet, so needless to say there are a lot of James out there with my last name, good thing I go by Jimmy…Right?

What about the people striving for different names, like the ones who exchange letters substituting an I for a Y or even an IE, an E for an A, swapping gender names like Johnny Cash’s “Boy Named Sue” or even something silly like K8 instead of Kate, naming kids after colors, animals, trees, planets, comic strips, sports figures or songs, what I am saying is there are a lot of options for names and whatever name you were given hopefully your parents put a lot of thought into it so you will be proud of it, and even if they didn’t, it is still your name to be proud of.

Your name defines who you are, what you make of your name and how you handle yourself in life is what people remember when they hear your name, so for all you K8’s and Jimmies, Fuchsia’s and Hyacinth’s, Kal-El’s and Kareem’s be proud of your name and do your best to show everyone that it is a good name.

Ask questions and find out where your name came from if you don’t already know, it’s a good feeling sometimes to see the family history in your name, and other times you can get a smile when you see how your name just may have been the first word that popped into your Moms head.

I told you how my Dad was named James, the same name as his paternal Grandfather, well it didn’t actually work that way because they thought his name was George so rather than being called George my Dad was named after his Moms Brother who was a James, and my Brother being given my Mom’s Fathers name for a middle name, his first name came from the #3 Billboard song of 1961 “Norman”, wonder what song was playing in the delivery room, and sad to say we just found out that his middle name was not actually Papa’s name, I guess Momma should have looked at a Crayola box.