Passing It On

My name is Larry and I am not a crook

My name is Larry Lehmer. Well, it’s actually Lawrence but just about everyone who actually knows me calls me Larry. Lawrence is used primarily for legal and business purposes and to help me screen out those phone calls from people who don’t actually know me but would have me believe I should know them, and share my worldly goods and/or knowledge with them.

My surname is certainly not the most common one around, but it’s not the most unusual, either. Nevertheless, it’s led to some confusion at times.

First, the pronunciation. It’s Laymer, not Leemer or Lemmer. I understand why people have trouble with the first syllable, but am totally befuddled how it often comes out Lehman. I suspect some people are just lazy readers, capturing the first part of a word and letting their imagination fill out the rest.

I would never use my last name on a waiting list at a restaurant. It’s on occasions like that where I often use a fictional name, like Bevo or Giuseppi (I let them spell that one phonetically).

Once in high school, the vice principal summoned a handful of ne’er-do-wells to his office for punishment. One of the names he read sounded similar to mine, once you took into account his routine butchering of names. Rather than risk further wrath, I showed up and he determined I was not the guilty party. “You’re lucky you’re not him,” he bellowed. Actually, luck had nothing to do with it.

As an adult, I’ve received phone calls from detectives in Iowa and adjacent states seeking to snare a fellow who was renting things and not returning them. My “crime?” I had a similar name and was listed in a phone book while the actual culprit was smart enough not to have his name and phone number in print.

What about you? How has your name impacted your own personal history? How about people close to you? As individuals, we are unique. Unfortunately, our names rarely are.

To read an earlier post I did on names, go here

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. If you’d like to know more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of  Larry Bourgeois "Bobo".

Who were you named for?

Names, names, names.

Names are the name of the game in genealogical research. They are the connectors and identifiers of our family trees. A misspelling, misjudgment or incorrect reference can send a family historian leaf-hopping to another, totally unrelated tree. Accuracy is critical in genealogical research.

As a family historian and biographer, I’m more interested in the stories behind the names. That includes their origins.

The influence of famous people extends well beyond their own family tree. They may have towns, buildings, streets or sandwiches named after them. They may even spark a surge of namesakes beyond their own families. My oldest son Aaron Guthrie, for example, is named after a favorite baseball player (Hank Aaron) and folk singer (Woody Guthrie).

But many of the names on our family trees are influenced more by those family members who came before. When my daughter was born, my wife, Linda, vowed that she would have a more unique name. There were many Lindas around during my wife’s childhood so she opted for the nice-sounding name of Meghan that she picked from a TV commercial. Unfortunately, that was about the same time that “The Thornbirds” was a best-selling novel with a Megan as a major character. All of a sudden, Megans were as common as Lindas were a decade earlier.

The name of our youngest boy, Bret Darby, is a nod to Linda’s father’s Irish roots.

What about your family? Do you know the stories behind the names in your own family tree?

Myra Vanderpool Gormley at Ancestry Magazine has written an interesting piece about how names were picked in her family and Chris Dunham, who has a knack for finding the offbeat over at The Genealogue, writes about a tennis star named Tennys, the real identity of Superman and a tale of using e-mail symbols to name your child.

To learn about one of the unexpected consequences of naming a child for a relative, check out this bookxo post. Or read my earlier post on names.

Larry Lehmer is a personal biographer who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or e-mail him.

Flickr photo courtesy of joeforan1972.