Morning all, Today I got to thinkin about names... what's that Willie said? "A name...what's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet!" And I thought, well there is a lot in a name.... my son became Joshua because of the one that "fit the battle of Jericho" and the sermon I listened to while pregnant with him, he recieved Thomas as his middle name because that was the name of MY father, and because my father never had a son and a long line of Thomas Dennis's was coming to an end after four generations, he got another middle name too...Dennis. Similar stories about my daughters' names. Now as for me, Mama says I became Jan (jan) because when her and my pa were courting their favorite restaurant was the Trojan and one night they looked up at the neon light and by golly the "Tro" was out and the "jan" lit up....voila! That, they decided then and there, would be their daughter's name when they had one, if they did. Well they did, and I was their crop which might be a blessing....suppose they next had been sitting in front of a Sinclair Gasoline Station and the neon part that said "claire" had been out and they named their next child "Sin"???? Sheesh.... I shudder to think of the possibilities! But back to this name business.... amazing the clues names can give us, right? And some we do not even notice....until we stumble on just the right thing. I always thought Philadelphia an odd name for my ggg grandmother McElroy-Fitzhugh..... until I learned that my McElroys first settled in ....ta da!...Philadelphia! My aunts never knew why their mother's middle name was "Delphie" (a variation of Philadelphia) until I told them that their great grandmother was Philadelphia, and more than likely grandpa had never heard his mother referred to as anything but "Delphie" so that is what he named his daughter. I almost missed my Hatcher connections because the descendents referred to gg grandmother as Victoria but the Hatcher cousins who did not come of her line knew her only as Rebecca Victoria in the family Bible and referred to her as Rebecca. Now there are supposedly "set patterns" for the names that were given in the families: such as the first son being named for the father's father, the second for the mother's father, , the third for the father, etc. and you can view those patterns at http://www.rootsweb.com/~genepool/naming.htm but understand that they are definitely not set in concrete and can only be taken as "perhaps clues". I wonder sometimes, how many clues we miss and never know the meaning of.... one that would have been lost I suppose if I had not known it to tell the only granddaughter of an aunt, was that her grandmother's name was actually Lillian Kathleen, and that Lillian came from the name of her grandmother's uncle's girlfriend. The young lady had never heard the story and I doubt she ever would have, or if anyone else even knew it to tell her if they thought of it. The uncle, actually a great great to this young woman, was killed in WW1 before he ever married his sweetheart, Lillian. Soooo...there was a story in that name that may well have been lost. Now I can't help but wonder how many other names in our lines there is a story behind and we simply don't know it. Why was one of my great uncles never named until he grew old enough to name himself...and then why did he call himself "Bowman"? Where does the first name "Madison" come from in my Fitzhugh family...where does "Wingfield" come from in the Dunlaps? I suspect they are clues to family connections but I haven't found them, although this story would be more obvious than Philadelphia's or Lillian's... Perhaps all of these names are "sweet clues".... No Willie, I think you got it wrong..."a rose by any other name would NOT smell as sweet"!!!! And that is my thought for the day, jan