What's In A Name

A few weeks back there was a blogging challenge going around to go to amazon.com and type in your name and see what came up. I took the challenge but saved it for today. My reason will become evident if you can just bear with me a few minutes. Thinking about my own name I thought “yeah right.” To my much delighted surprise I found a book title that included my name. However, the book dealt with a surname and not a first name. Needless to say I was stunned. Having done about five years of genealogy study I knew how important surnames were. Now I was finding my name was actually some other family’s surname. In my lifetime I have only met one person whose name was the same as mine. She happened to be a cashier who was waiting on me. Then a couple of years ago I was being introduced to a computer tech who would be working with my school. When they said my name she looked surprised and with a smile on her face told me her mother’s name was also Carletta. It’s not a common name you see everyday. How did I get this name that I had always thought was only mine? That brings me to why this particular blog today.
In my parent’s generation, families believed the first born of a family should be a boy and as such be named after his father. My Mom and Dad were no different. In fact, my father’s name was already assigned to my unborn existence. It was a given. Well, along came Valentine’s Day and me with red hair – a girl. The dilemma became what to name me. My parents didn’t have a TV, but listened to the radio. The local station broadcast names of newborn babies. Must have been slow news days back in the 50’s! There was a little girl born to a man named Paul and her parents named her Pauletta. That’s how my parents got the idea and I became Carletta after my father Carl. It was always the story when someone wanted to know about my name. It’s interesting to find out after all these years the name has a true beginning and I’m looking forward to researching that when time permits. No matter what I find, my name is still uniquely my own. By the way, I wasn’t the only one named after my father. When little brother Junior came along a year later, he too was named after Dad. I’ve always been proud to be named after my father. I’m sure my brother is too. I’m just as sure Dad was just as proud. Dad passed away almost 12 years ago and I still miss miss him dearly. Today would have been his 82nd birthday. Happy Birthday Daddy, I Love You.