So.. here’s a story for the family history – my mother gave herself a middle name this week!
For the majority of her life, she has lamented the fact that she did not have a middle name. All of her siblings had one, but yet, she didn’t. I guess it has really had an impact on her because now she’s deciding that she will start using one. And, she chose her mother’s middle name as her own. You don’t see that happening every day!
And, I have updated her name in my genealogy records – along with a note to explain when and where her middle name came from (because it will not ever appear on any official records).
My mother is quite a character and this is something that is right up her alley, and I LOVE it!
My great-grandmother Truitt did much the same as your mother but she gave herself a whole given name when she was about 4. She was born in 1875, the last of 5 children and her parents had never called her anything but “Babe”. The story goes that one day she decided she needed a name like her siblings so she named herself Mary Francis. She got married and later had my grandmother, Nonnie (Armstrong) Midgett. So what is your mother’s “new” middle name? I think my great-grandmother and your mother would have been kindred spirits!
Love this story! My Dad & his twin/my Uncle, were the youngest of 6 boys, born in 1920. They often told the story, that their mother selected their middle names by roving her finger down the page of a phone book! So… Don got Edward, and to my Uncle’s never ending frustration, he was given ELBERT. He only ever used “E” – even on all his legal dox except their birth certificates – written by their mid-wife grandmother, as a delayed dox, signed by the local doctor. 😉 🤩
Oh that’s a fun way to come up with a middle name! ha ha! Thank you for sharing!