A Tree! We caught a Tree!
You guys have some great name suggestions. I was really inspired by your responses and have renewed my quest for the perfect Anglo-Italian boy name. Rob is going to read through them and I am hoping he’ll find a spark. We live in a pretty heavily dominated Italian city (much like Boston!) so the kid may end up fitting right in.
I had my mom drop off the “family tree box” last night. There is a fair bit of genealogy work in that box, most of the work has been done on my mom’s side (her paternal side has a direct line to Isaac Cummings. Maybe that’s why I love Boston so?!). The work for her side was “easier” as the English decedents in that line came to the United States in 1635. The German side (her maternal side) is a bit more difficult, the decedents that were “off the boat” were my great-great grandparents. Things get fuzzy pre-America as many had name changes when they arrived (thankfully they determined that Haganbutcher wasn’t the greatest name for a family that was now Doctors).
My father’s side, the full on Italian side (and the side that “raised” us) is also hard as the first “off the boat” were my great- grandparents. First names were anglicized and many of the records indicate those names as birth names (although, I know from family lore they are not). My Aunt Mayme will always be my Aunt Mayme but her birth name was Domenica and man could she make a mean Christmas cookie (she suffers from severe dementia right now, I miss her and her blue hair). Surnames were shortened in only one case (that I am aware of) and I am guessing that was an effort to escape discrimination. (It wasn’t so cool to be an Italian in the mid century, as a result a lot of my families traditions and ethnicity were watered down. In fact, when my mother told my great grandmother (a full blooded German) that she was going to marry and Italian in 1973 my Granny just about had a heart attack). To make matters more confusing after my father’s Paternal Grandfather passed away his Paternal Grandmother married his Maternal Great-Uncle. Small town, what can I say?
All of this to say that the names found in the box were not much help as they stopped here in America. My Uncle Anthony (my Grandmother’s brother and one of my all time favorite people in this world) has been to Italy a few times to research and I have a call in to him for more information about the homeland peeps. Stay tuned! For the record we have a bunch of Michaels, Antonios, Vincents, Josephs, a Felix, a Carmen – rinse repeat. Not too creative with the first names. Damn Catholics and their saints. 
Enjoy your Christmas Eve Eve. I am stuck at work until this afternoon. Trying to reserve vacation time for maternity leave. It’s quite, but not too quite (I work in a hospital and, unfortunately, people are always in hospitals). We’re off to my aunt’s this afternoon for extended family fun. Sophia has her party dress all ready to go, I’ll be back to share pictures. She can’t wait to go to the party – she has come to associate parties with cake so there is much excitement around going to the party and having cake. She is also the only grand-child/niece/cousin on this side so she gets all kinds of loving.
More eye-candy for you!
“Look, we caught a tree!”
“Pink Yummy” (hat courtesy of My Sandy)
Related posts:
5 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.