So yesterday my daughter posted on Facebook that she and her husband were having a problem agreeing on baby names. (Baby #2 is due on March 9th) As a rabid genealogist,I immediately went into my family tree and looked for family names. They’re first child was given a Danish name and my father’s name for his middle name which would have pleased my Dad no end. It certainly did me. According to Scottish naming tradition,the first girl should be named after the mother’s mother so that would be my name. I like that. If I had followed that tradition,my daughter’s name should have been Helene. The one great thing about this tradition is that it makes it fairly easy to find relatives. My father,James,was the first son of Robert,who was the first son of James,who was the first son of Robert and so on and so on. So you get a lot of the same names popping up over and over again.
Some of my daughter’s friends came up with some truly horrible names. What would I do if they came up with a name that I really don’t like. I never thought about that.
And what is going on with the weird spellings that people are using these days. Although I have an unusual name,I rarely have to spell it out for anyone. I think that could get quite annoying after a while. I know that I use my middle name and whenever I’m dealing with some government body they always call me by my first name which irritates me a lot.
I was thinking about names recently and wondered about Queen Latifah’s name. I wonder if that’s a stage name or her real name. I like the idea of being called Queen. Maybe I should suggest that.
So anyway the most unusual name that I found in my family tree was my grandmother’s father’s name –Ignatz. I wonder if Iggy Pop’s name was Ignatz?
