Creative People

I had been talking with someone recently about how Ellie's middle name, Sophia, comes from a great-great-some-number-of-great's grandmother.  Curiosity got the best of me tonight, and I pulled out the family history album.

Turns out that Sophia is Ellie's great-great-great-great-great-grandmother.  Sophia Kellogg was born in 1828, and would go on to give birth to Irinda, who had Jennie, who had Helen, who had Kay, who was my Mom's Mom.  Then my Mom obviously went on to have me and then Ellie's the latest in the line.  So, I figured it out, just how many greats were in the picture.

But then, as always when I pull out the family album, I can't help but become engrossed in the names and people who came before me.  I love some of the names I've come across.  When my Grandma Kay was born, she had two cousins born at around the same time, who were named Ray and Fay.  I've been harrassing my sister Talina ever since . . . our babies will be three months apart, what names can we rhyme?!  :-)

There were the twins Elbert and Wilbert, who pose in a picture with their nephews, Pennell and Parnell.  (Pennell being my grandfather).

The four sisters who all had 'v' in their names:  Belva, Elvira, Verona and Olive. 

Apparently the 'themes' are big in my family, as we have our A(nnie), E(llie), I(saac) vowel thing going (although it really did start out accidentally!)  So I got a few new ideas for 'O' names we could possibly use for our new baby from my family history:  Olive or Orville.  Surprisingly, Greg's not jumping at either of them.

If we opened it up to all vowels (just from within my Mom's side of the family) we could go with: Irene, Upham, Elvira, Adelia, Ella, Almer, Amasa, Amanda, Edward (there's a line of like 7 or 8 Edward's in a row in our family tree), Albert, Anderson, Anders, Ingeborg, Elizabeth, Esther, Emerson

If we left the vowel theme altogether but stuck with family names, we could pick from such awesome choices as:  Petronella, Movell, Phylinda, Cordelia, Sophronia, Spicer, Moses, Rhoda, Lucinda (who's full maiden name was Lucinda Blood), Spinda (Sophia's daughter), Lemar, Parley, Prudence, Burns, Morrel, Bethia, Gunhild, Niels, and of course, the 'V' names that weren't started with vowels, Verona or Belva.

But to this day, my favorite names ever belonged to my great-great-great grandparents on the other side of my family.  Wilmurth LaMaude married Mahonri Moriancumer (those are their first and middle names).  I am convinced that they met and fell in loved, based at least in part on the fact that they both had tremendously horrible names.  :-) 

Seriously, these people were creative -- you don't come across names like these every day! :-)   (Unless you're indexing names of pioneer stock or something, of course.) 

And people thought my daughter's names were 'unique' (Annalise and Elliana) . . . I guess it's just in my blood! :-)