31 December 2010

The Puritan Baby Book

You might consider naming YOUR children one of these baby names that are a part of my family's heritage. Somebody needs to compile a BIG book of Puritan baby names, before gems like these are lost forever:

Thankful Snow. You'd think this would be an uncommon enough name that a simple google search for "Thankful Snow" would reveal nothing. You would be so, so wrong. Several results, presumably for different Thankful Snows, popped up. Mine was born in Massachusetts a very, very, verrrry long time ago.

Mehitable. It's a girl's name. There was more than one... they were actually able to find suitors and get married, too.

Lemon and Orange. These are BOYS' names. You know... like "Roelof" and "Evert." We actually have several Oranges in our family tree. One of the Oranges, of course, named his son Lemon. I guess he was tired of being called "Orange" after his own father and wanted to give his son something more citrus-y and different. :)

Keziah. Girl's name.

Jerusha. Also a girl's name.

And finally... what were "Silence Hurd"'s parents thinking? Silence. Heard. Were they humourous little Puritans, or was it just one of those funny mistakes people made??

PS. Emperor's name is boring by comparison. More than once I've been asked why I saddled the boy with such a name, or how could he ever learn to spell it, and things like that.

17 comments:

  1. When I was in elementary school, my best friend was named Blueberry. She had a cousin named Raspberry and another one named Kingsberry.

    The absolute worst name I've ever heard was Latrine. For a girl.

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  2. One of the doctor's that I worked for named his daughter Keziah.So, now I have seen that name twice...maybe it just hasn't taken off yet? lol

    I think that even with some of these 'odd' names, they are much kinder than a lot that are out there in society. A few years ago a well known celebrity named his child Inspektor Pilot.That is hideous unless the kid will actually grow up to inspect pilots for something.

    I think the strangest names on our family tree would be my husband's Grandfather who was named Charles, but nicknamed 'Burdette', and we honestly didn't know that his name was Charles until he died....no one did. Weird.

    I do like unique names, don't get me wrong. When naming my kids, the girly you already know her name, and the boy is Gavyn in the real world. I liked the name and didn't know of anyone with that name other than Gavin McLeod, the actor. I guess I've strapped my kids with normalcy. They will hate me for it, I'm sure. :)

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  3. Blueberry... ohhh the poor kid.

    And Blondee... um... Gavin is a much more common than you might think. lol

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  4. I know two people named Keziah.

    I like less common names. But, my kids have normal names. With the exception of Americanizing the spelling of our youngest daughter's name, the kids all have the names given them by their mother's at birth. I added a middle name -- Sojourner, Delany and Douglass. I had planned on using Sojourner as a first name! My daughter is very glad I didn't give birth to her.

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  5. Happy New Year! Here's to a great new year!

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  6. Well at leasdt Methusula never came in fashion....☺

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  7. Julie, Sojourner and Douglass I got right away, but "Delany" I had to look up. Aand what I found was that there was a black fellow named Delany who wrote... erotic literature?? He doesn't quite go with Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, but ok.

    Sojourner is a very kewl name, though I am more partial to the obviously European names for my own children.

    I'm puzzled that everyone seems to know a Keziah, though...

    Happy new year to you as well, Twisted Cinderella!

    Ganeida, I haven't scanned the tree for a Methuselah (sp?) yet, but given some of the names I've outlined it's not out of the question that I miight just find it somewhere. The Oranges don't fall far from the tree, you know.

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  8. I love the Lemon and Orange. My family tree is full of John's and Thomases. There was Perigrin, though. What's up with that?

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  9. My grandfather and his brothers---Mansel, Brown, and Number. Always thought that was weird, but apparently Brown as a first name is so common in Appalachia as to make family history searches difficult when combined with a fairly common last name, and there are a lot of Numbers or Numers there too.

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  10. My grandpa's name was Dude! Haha. How cool is that. Hey, Dude!

    But Blueberry? Weeeeeird.

    I have heard of twins Salt and Pepper.

    Although I admit to being weird wishing that I had named my four boys Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Haha. Seriously.

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  11. Bonnie, sounds pretty Hobbit-y, or maybe Tolkien is related to you distantly and was looking at the family tree for inspiration...

    Viverrine, today we are using many last names as first names... so... Brown would fit into that. Number I have to admit makes it sound as though they had so many children they had to go with a "Seven of Nine" sort of designation. But thinking about it, it may be similar to "Silence" insofar as it is a character trait to "Number" our days so we can live aright. Thank you for dropping by and commenting!

    Virginia, I do know of a couple who named their girls Faith, Hope and Charity. Then they had another girl. Grace! :)

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  12. yeah, I love pointing out the Cannon Fodder in the first two minutes of the episode.

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  13. I thiiiink you are reading several blogs at once and have responded to the wrong post... :)

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  14. Hey, I LOVE the name Jerusha! I have a friend named that and have tried it out in the name selection process several times. It just never completely fit.

    What's with the baby names these days??? Why can't people name their kids normal things?! You know like Ihbeleg and Ganchimeg. ;-)

    My poor third-culture kids. LOL! They'll learn to love it (Hey, I love my name!)....or they'll go get therapy.

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  15. Awww... your children are rich in about every sense of the word. And besides, therapy is on their dime later, so pick the name you like! :)

    My children have names that pretty well fell from favour at least 50 years ago and are named for great grandfathers and Biblical guys and whatnot.

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  16. Awwww, thanks! I WISH my kids were rich in the financial sense of the word, but I suppose in all the senses of that word that is the least important. :-)

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  17. I've heard many a warning against naming a child Chastity.

    ~Luke

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Non-troll comments always welcome! :)

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