What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?
According to Ancestry.com; Middle names began appearing in late Medieval times. In England, they were reserved for the nobility, with an old law making them illegal for the rest of the population. Since the Pilgrims and many early settlers came from England, early Americans followed the tradition of having only two names.
You can see evidence of this in the early Massachusetts birth records on Ancestry. In Boston, no middle names appear in the 1600s. They start showing up in the early 1700s with a few stray Mary Anns, followed by occasional triple-barreled boy’s names from 1720 to 1740, like Charles Hobby Hubbart and Jonathan Armitage Fyfield. (Girls were less likely to be given such nomenclatorial baggage.) Only about 5 percent of Americans born during the Revolutionary War era had middle names.
Few Boston babies were given middle names in the 1730s. But settlers from Germany had other ideas. Immigration records from the same period list many Germans with middle names:
Tradition
My family has a long history of passing down names. Sometimes it’s the full name, both first and middle name. Sometimes it may be the middle name only. Fortunately, the second instance proved true.
My grandmother was born 1889 and I am sure in that era, her name “Bessie Mae” was probably a common name for that time period. As a 1960s baby, “Bessie” wasn’t a popular name. Thank God.
I do however like my middle name “Mae” and the fact that I was named after my grandmother.
Strength and Perseverance
This is a woman of strength and perseverance. She was married at thirteen years old, to a man thirteen years her senior. Their love for each other was remarkable.
They lived through two world wars, the depression, the dust bowl and countless other adversities.
My grandmother gave birth to eleven children, nine of which survived. My mother was the youngest of the eleven. Not one of her children was born in a hospital. My mother was born in a covered wagon and her sister closest to her in age was born in a cotton field.
California Bound
Her strength drove her to survive. My grandmother and grandfather and nine children moved to California from Oklahoma when my mother was twelve years old. They lived in cars, old train boxcars, and one-room shacks along the way. Working the fields of whatever was in season.
My grandfather died the year before I was born. Later, when she told me stories of about him, her eyes had a special twinkle.
To carry a woman’s name with such strength and perseverance is an honor.
Thank you for joining me today.
Bell