Names

This is my first blog entry and I would like to dedicate it to my niece, Lauren, who showed me the road to setting up my own blog site.  So, anyone who reads it (like those of you that I will insist do so and quiz later), you can thank her for "letting me loose."  Take that any way that you wish.

Names -
    
     When my niece was a little girl she was at one time obsessed with names.  She wanted to name everything, including but not limited to her future children.  I had been like that and still am to some extent.  I like to write, but it takes me a millennia to come up with the right name for my character.  I named my children, three boys, solid, kind of common, American boys' names.  They all go with our last name, although I must admit that my mother-in-law was really good with names to go with Stein.

     My father's mother had six children to name.  A very religious, devout Catholic, Polish woman, she started naming her children not after herself or her husband, but in a religious mode.  Joseph came first followed closely by Mary.  It would seem then that her third, a boy, should be....well I guess you get the drift here.  No, she did not, she named him Edward.  When the next child came along, a prestigious Catholic cardinal had recently passed away, and as we who have given birth know, our minds are not always where they should be directly after.  She named him, a child who would be my father in later years, Edmund after the cardinal.  No one is quite sure if she remembered that she already had a child named Ed, because she never showed any doubt as to her naming abillity.  We thought that perhaps the names were quite different in Polish, but that is not the case, they both start with Ed.  Because of this, the younger Ed was stuck with the nickname, Mundzik, thus alleviating the confusion of two Eds.  It would have made more sense to call the elder Ed, Ward, which is actually a real name.  Naturally, as would any person, Mundzik hated the pet name.  It was basically the term "Little Mund" which is pretty awful to say the least.  Now, while the joke goes around and around in my family that the mother thought "two Eds are better than one" the two Eds were as different as steak and pie.  That is a story for another time, back to names.

     The tradition in my family is one that we generally do not name children after ourselves, at least most of us do not, we really do not have to, others do that for us.  Now, my Aunt Mary wanted to name her baby girl after her mother who had a lovely name, Helena.  It seems that Helena did not care much for her own name, and thus forbade her daughter from using it.  Therefore, Mary named her girl Helene, or little Helen.  Sneaky way to get around her mother's wishes.  It did not stop there though, as Helene's mother gave her the pet name, Eenie, or little Helene?  My eldest female cousin is named Lorraine, which I am sure is thanks to her mother's good ear and able naming ability.  She thankfully did not leave it up to my Uncle Joe, who would have  named his daughter after some kind of construction equipment or machinery.  Then my father stepped in and helped out.  Remember that he is the Ed of Mundzik fame, and decided to call his little niece "Iodine" after a popular comic strip, 'Lil' Iodine."  He picked this "pet" name because my cousin was and still is a little spitfire, full of energy and simply put "fire" but not much spit. On another note, she looks like a pretty Liz Taylor, but that too is a story for another time.

     Now, the other Ed also had children, but he left the naming up to his wife, Mary  who the family always referred to by her maiden name to delineate her from the Mary in the original family.  The original Mary always was simply Mary, except with a shortened version of her last name which was quite a mouthful.  The maiden name Mary named her first son, John, which very closely resembles the child's last name of Jonik. She must have liked alliteration.  She admitted though, that she was not thinking, she just liked the sound of the name.  I wonder why?  Perhaps it was because she already had it as her married last name, but again, she was always called by her maiden name, so she could have been thinking of that, or not thinking at all.  That would not be such a stretch for someone who has just given birth to her first child.  However, she redeemed herself with the naming of the rest of her children.  She named them on the somewhat religious mode in the tradition of her mother-in-law.  There was John of alliteration fame, then Paul, Philip, and Stephen for the boys.  Immediately, my Uncle Stanley dubbed them "John Paul Philip Sousa."  One can imagine to which tune he was marching.  Then Mary and Ed, the elder, had two girls, Ann and Marie, a bit religious and again with the adaptation of Mary, her name, and that of her sister-in-law but not quite naming the child after herself or her sister-in-law.

     Then another brother, as I mentioned before was Stanley, which is Stashu in Polish, so he readily called himself Stashu of Liberty, I guess he had delusions of grandeur.  He, of course, married a woman named Edna thus making three Eds in the family, Ed, Ed and Eddy.  The last child in the original family was named Frances, a good solid name that no one else had, I would imagine that she was glad to be female or she might be another Stanley, remember, my grandmother liked duplicate names.  She was much younger than her sister, Mary, and my grandmother probably, after six kids, forgot that there was a Mary so the name was left singular.  Almost.  Frances had a daughter (also a son, but he doesn't count) and named her Mary Frances therefore getting both sisters' names in one, and she was called Mary Frances.  However, her father, Frances' husband was another Joe.  That gave me another Uncle Joe.  I already had two, but one was from my mother's side.

     Now, getting to the other side of the family.  When my grandmother gave birth at home to her first child, a son, she was planning to name him Raymond. She was tired, as one might think after giving birth, and she passed the son and the job of taking the baby to the register to have a birth certificate drawn up and receive his given name, (as well as his last name), to my happy grandfather.  My grandfather and his father, John, rushed with babe in arms to the office in question and immediately named the child, John Raymond.  Needless to say, my grandmother was not a happy camper when they returned with the certificate in hand.  Now, both my grandparents also had issues with names.  My grandmother called herself Mary, which was not her name.  It was Lorenza.  Her Irish born mother was a great reader and named her children after whatever character in whatever book she was currently reading.  Her very Irish children were named, John, Francis, Anna, Edward,(only one in this family, other than her husband, which is acceptable), Leonard, Manuel, aka Manny, Lorena, (after a very popular song of the time) but called Rena, Idella, Hubert and finally the baby, Lorenza.  Lorenza, as I might have mentioned detested her name so she called herself Mary and made it stick (that is until, at least, I found out and used her proper name which I liked).  She married a man named Jack, not John after his father, but in reality, Gustav.  He, like his wife, did not care much for his given name, so he changed it.  So Mary and Jack aka Lorenza and Gustav, had three children.  The first was named John, against Mary's better wishes, and the next was Florence, and then Catherine, who later became my mother, named after her grandmother.  So this side of the family had no problems naming chldren after others, it would seem.  One would think the exception was Florence. Wrong. She was named after a family friend and went on to name her child, Florence, narrowed down to Flossie, after herself and going back to the family friend.  Now Flossie did not care too much for her name so she calls herself Marie, but unlike her grandmother of Lorenza fame, she will answer to either name.

     Now my name is Patricia and one would think that it is uncomplicated, but not in my family.  My Uncle John had a daughter named Catherine Patricia, she was named after my mother and  a sibling of her mother's, making both women happy.  Lo and behold, she was never called Catherine, they called her Patsy.  She was the first. Then my Aunt Florence had a baby and named her Patricia, she died as an infant.  She was the second.  I am the third and am called "Patty" by my family which I detest, but answer to. Next my brother, David, (only one of them, thank goodness) married a woman named Patricia whom we call Pat.  She is the fourth. I married a man named William who has a sister named Patricia.  She is the fifth.  His brother, Michael (yes there is one of them in my family as well) married a woman named, you guessed it, Patricia.  She is the sixth.  On my father's side, my cousin Phil (a son of the other Ed) married a woman named Patricia.  She is the seventh.  She goes by Patsy, which completes the cycle of Patsy to Patsy.  To confuse things more, my sister-in-law, Patricia number four, has a brother named William like my husband, and a brother Richard, like my husband's brother, and a son, Michael, again like another of my husband's brothers.  That means that my brother, the one and only David, and I share duplicate in-laws.  However, my husband's brother Richard married a girl named Denise.  Which brings me back to my niece.

     My grandmother's name was Lorenza, my cousin is named Lorraine, my great niece and nephew are Luiza and Luican respectively, and my niece is Lauren, (lots of le sounds there) who still likes to name people, cats, flowers, characters, bridges, roads, trees and future children.  Please no more Eds, Marys, Pats etc.