A Valentine for Daisy sparked an interesting thread of discussion about awful, awful names. Betty Magdalen had some doozies hanging on her family tree and Betty Kylene was no slouch in that department either. But, there. We were hardly even trying. So everyone (Yes, I mean you Sheboygan, Wisconsin.) shake around your family tree a bit and lets see how bad we can actually get. The only rule is that they must be some relation and, because of all the Hanna Bettys, you are allowed to plumb your spouse's tree too (because there's nothing more nutty than in-laws).
There's no prize here but bragging rights. Strap on the game face. Sell long-deceased relatives down the road. It's on.
I'll go first. Dorton. That's him with the ears. Our father was named after him (second name, thankfully). That's Grandma Hanna (Hellen Claire--see nurse photo) on the far left. But her name is lovely, so never mind that.
How about Joannes Jacobus ZEHFUSS?
ReplyDeleteZehfuss? Where was he from?
ReplyDeleteBird-dog Betty Debbie catches the whiff of Dutch in the air...
ReplyDeleteZehfuss sounds Amish or Mennonite, i.e., Pennsylvania "Dutch" (which is really a corruption of Deutsch, meaning German).
ReplyDeleteHmm -- do I have anyone better than Amber, Beryl & Garnet hanging from the branches of my family tree? Temptation to find the book with one part of my mother's ancestry traced back 500 years is strong, but that's cheating. So no, I think you've gotten the best I can produce . . . or do you?
This is tangential, but nicknames can be amusing, yes? My mother and her three younger sisters originally took nicknames from The Wind in the Willows (my mother was Toad, Magdalen-the-Elder was Mole, Mary Gray was Badger, and Ann Thacher was Rat). The first two stuck -- my mother will forever be known as "Aunt Toadie" to my cousins, and my namesake was known as Aunt Mole.
The younger two both ended up with nicknames picked up because they had those rather boyish hair cuts popular in the 30s. Mary Gray got called "Sonny" and it stuck, and the youngest (who uses Thacher -- a family name -- as her first name) was called "Butch." Butch, Butchie, Butchely -- they are all bad. But said in love.
Butchely, nee Thacher, will be celebrating her 84th birthday on Sunday. She's a civil rights lawyer who still volunteers with the Boston ACLU.
Speaking of nicknames....I had an awesome one when I was a teenager. "Crash".
ReplyDeleteWe've still got some doozies in our family tree. Maternal grandparents: Wirt and Wrennie Walley. No, those weren't nicknames.
Ooh, and I almost forgot -- my mother came by all that excruciating whimsy honestly. Her father was #4 of four children:
ReplyDeleteRebecca, known as Beccle (this is a very Germanic way of making nicknames
Hans, who must have been really serious because no nickname of him!
Eric, known as Monkle because he was 6'5" and thus looked like a monkey
Dora, known as Dorcle.
Great-grandpa Homer and great-grandma Guineveere (yup, double ees in there on purpose. Those names are mouthfuls you don't hear very often anymore!
ReplyDeleteOur mother had some Great-great aunts/uncles with interesting names. Nebraska - she had a lovely nickname "Aunt Darling", Minerva - not so lucky in the nickname department "Aunt Nerve", Goldsberry - again, not so lucky "Uncle Goog", Missouri - not sure if it's good or bad, "Aunt Pink" (why Pink? Did she like to wear pink, was she an albino with pink eyes? Questions, questions)...there are more siblings in the same family, but these have the funnest names.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, those people were not only my mother's great-great aunts and uncles (on her father's side), but they were also her great-great-great aunts and uncle on her mother's side. Yeah, we stepped out of the shallow end of the gene pool.
TMI?
The name is German. I'll have to explore Michael's lines a little more.
ReplyDeleteBreaking out a family history book is NOT cheating.
Well, Betty Debbie is the Great High Arbiter of All That Is Good & Worthy here, but I gotta throw my vote to Wirt & Wrennie Walley. W is such an under-appreciated consonant, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteBetty Debbie -- Does that mean that when we know you better, we can call you "Betty Crash"?
ReplyDelete"W" IS an underappreciated consonant...and you have to love the alliteration.
ReplyDeleteHow about "Crash Betty"? (I totally earned the nickname "Crash" by rolling a van my senior year of high school)