BABY NAME BOOKS : GET A CLUE!

I just love baby name books, because of the meanings attributed to the names, and all the different spellings offered.  I wonder, "What would someone named Ursula be like?" (Having never met an Ursula in real life!)

Though there are many baby name books out there, as well as many baby name sites on the web, there simply cannot be a totally comprehensive index of names. 

One of the pleasures of genealogy is coming across names you've never heard of before, names from history, names that have gone out of fashion, names waiting to be resurrected by the naming of a new baby, or perhaps the renaming a poet does for themselves!

Genealogy research - doing those charts - sometimes makes us aware of how a name has been used and repeated in a family for generations. 

One research quest I worked on featured the name Dicey for women.  I don't think I ever made it to the Original Dicey, but I did get back to the family just arrived from Scotland in the 1700's.

Watching the feminine forms of masculine names such as Julianna, the great grandmother of Julius, may or may not give us a clue about the relationship.  In this case, no one in America had ever heard of the great grandmother in Hungary, but I was able to confirm that in childhood it was this woman, not Julius' mother, who provided him care as an infant.  The family must have known it was going to be that way before he was born.

These days there are many creative names.  I find this particularly true in the Black community.  Using baby books and other references I found that one of the most popular Black names in America, Lakeisha, is a made up name.  In other words, not one book I looked at said that it's a name that came from Africa, or some other ethnic group and one book said it was an invention.  (I even have a friend who named her dog Lakeisha!)

Next month, February, I'll be looking into African American research and history once again remembering how interesting using the Freedman Bank Records database is, and the mystery of African-American / Black given and surnames can be.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GENOME PROJECT CONTINUES ON!

I wrote about the National Geographic Genome project a while back and today I decided to see what was happening with it, since I recently met a couple people who said they had paid the $199. and sent their results in to be shared.  I thought the project had ended, but apparently not.  It is ongoing and in real time!

Here's the link : NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DNA TEST : GENO 2.0

PEW INSTITUTE ON BIRTHRATES : IMMIGRANTS HAVING CHILDREN WHO ELSE?

SOCIAL TRENDS : PEW INSTITUTE : FEW BABIES BEING BORN  link to full article.

OK, it used to be a woman had little to no choice about having children.  Her opinions were to be a married woman, a nun, or maybe, rarely, a "spinster" schoolteacher or nurse.  (Some of us know our mothers had to quit their jobs when they got married, some of us remember being told on interviews when we asked about future prospects of the job, "you'll just get married anyway.")  Then, birth control happened, as did abortion.  These days many people are in full control of their fertility and have decided they just can't afford a child, not in this economy anyway.

WHO WILL THEIR BE TO DO OUR GENEALOGY?

WILL THE ROYAL BABY BE A VICTORIA OR A PHILLIP?

NAMING A ROYAL BABY : article from DIGITAL JOURNAL OP ED by Martin Kujawa link to full article.

I enjoyed reading Kujawa's article and speculated that the Royal Couple will probably follow tradition, and maybe have a whole lot of people butting in about what to name their baby, which, reading other articles, was announced to be due in July and most likely not a twin!  Meanwhile in Great Britain there is word that there will be some changes.  First that the child will be titled Princess or Prince right away, second that if it be a female, she will still be first in line to the thone, and third that the Royal personage destined to be King or Queen may marry a Catholic, and finally, that Prince Charles is wondering about what this all means because the King or Queen of England is also head of the church.

OK, so I am not expecting this Royal Baby to be named Tiffany or Roger!

DOES YOUR FAMILY HAVE A DOLLAR PRINCESS ?

DAISY GOODWIN ON DOLLAR PRINCESSES from THE DAILY BEAST/NEWSWEEK link to full article here.

From Ancestry Worship Genealogy:  OK, Winston Churchill had American blood and so did Lady Diana Spencer...  Dollar Princesses are the American heiresses who married titled Europeans, moved to Europe, and became the grandmothers and great grandmothers of some illustrious people.  Mary Leiter, the Chicago department-store heiress who married Lord Curzon is another Dollar Princess. Florence Sharon, a senator’s daughter from Nevada, who married Lord Hesketh yet another.

 Aren't you intregued?


Daisy Goodwin is a historical fiction author who knows her subject.

IMMIGRANT SHIPS TRANSCRIPTION GUILD : OVER A DECADE OF VOLUNTEERISM : ALWAYS SEEKING NEW RECRUITS!

IMMIGRANT SHIPS TRANSCRIPTION GUILD  link to their official home page.

The Guild has been working on transcription of passenger lists.  They have transcribed over 12,000 ship lists which are in thirteen volumes.  Their Compass which points to the fact that immigrants came on ships to ports besides the well known New York port.  Their volunteer work provides information to the genealogy researching public that is at no charge as a public service.

I remember years ago researching for someones lost branch of family in Texas.  The branch wasn't just lost.  Back in the early 20th century a family member married someone who wasn't Jewish and she was kicked out of the family.  She and her non-Jewish husband left New York and moved to Texas.  I was able with the help of an archive and museum in Texas to locate these people through Galveston Texas.  It was thought they had taken the train from New York to Chicago and then through New Mexico - and there were train routes and transfers that would have provided the transportation, but instead they went to Galveston by boat, sailing down the Atlantic coast and through the Gulf of Mexico. 

The main page also links to a lot of helpful information.  I was just browsing Janet's page on Germans from Russia, immigrants into New York, Baltimore, Galveston, and Philadelphia.

SAVING THE NATIONAL TREASURES : NOVA DVD : THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

This was a fascinating film, about restoration efforts to preserve our founding documents, focusing on the preservation of the much faded Declaration of Independence. In the 1940's a dead bug had infiltrated the state of the art case for the parchments and had eaten some of the edging. An effort to preserve the documents from all natural disasters including the atom bomb was made. It might have been state of the art but it was not good enough.

In the 1990's technology had advanced and so a team of experts - perhaps too many - came together to debate and design the cases. Crystals were forming on the surface of the parchment. Even vibration could have been damaging the documents. Helium gas had been used and was leaking. There is always the problem of humidity. The new case uses argon gas. An effort to include silica for humidity control was dismissed.

Funniest thing. The whole operation of moving the documents and restoring them was a secret operation. CODE NAME ELVIS!