You have to be careful about middle names. Up in Maine, I once dated a girl whose middle name was Grace. As we got closer, I spent more time with her and her family. They always called her Gracie. So, one day, I slipped and called her Gracie. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my face with a headache. The billet of firewood she had whacked me with was just a yard away. Nobody, other than her close family, called her Gracie.
Taking the hint that I was evidently not candidate material for a close family position, and her tendency towards gratuitous physical violence, I backed off from the relationship. Somehow, I could see her at ninety-five, in a closed dementia nursing unit. Some innocent staff member had affectionately referred to her as Gracie and had been clubbed by the bedpan.
I had another friend while working in the government whose middle initial was R. He never volunteered what the entire name was, just growled out that if an English speaker pronounced it, it sounded like something you’d scrape off the sole of your shoe. end of conversation. No debate, and please no inquiries.
Now me? Pretty basic, Nicholas. But with an enormous amount of history. At least one of my direct line has had the moniker since the first one left Girona in Catalonia in about 1864. Where we are from, there were so many Nicholas Carreras that genealogy gets confused. More reliable than the name are the distinctive brow, the widow’s peak, and a few other facial features. Those, shall we say, first-hand characteristics are more telling.
Nicholas alternates from first to middle over the generations on the Catalan side of my family, and I have continued the passage. So I am Louis Nicholas Carreras, my youngest is Louis Nicholas, and my oldest is Nicholas Aladar Carreras. The middle name Aladar is the gift of the Hungarian part of the family through my great uncle Aladar. That’s another story.
So be careful calling anyone named Grace Gracie. And watch out for names pronounceable only in Central European languages, and if you meet a Carreras, ask him where in Spain his family comes from.
And remember a middle name is not just a name.
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My mother spared all her children from middle names. She hated when the teachers did roll call and read out her first and two middle names, none of which she was called by.
Like Gracie, get a hunk of firewood…that’ll teach ’em!
Lol!
Mine is Ann. The story? One of my mom’s good friends. My dad unilaterally named me after my mom’s sister, Martha, and angered my mom in the doing. She wanted me to be Elizabeth or Julie. When I was at the private school in Omaha — 6th and 7th grades — I went by Ann. The only time EVER there was another Martha in my class. Not a very interesting story, but my mom’s idea of who I would be when I grew up didn’t suit either of the names she had in mind and I loved my Aunt Martha very much. And that Ann? She was a very very nice woman.
Sometimes, families fight about things we think are crazy, but are critically important to them. The Purses and the Purses ( pronounced Pierce) was on that I remember from Maine.
I love the fact that your first name is my cat’s name, and your middle name is Cat Daddy’s name! 🤣🤣🤣PS Gracie sounds like a psycho. You dodged a bullet.
Agreed!
You have really run into some pretty interesting women, Lou. 🙂 I have always gone by my middle name and the aunt I was named after also went by that same middle name. I have a cousin who was named after me but when she got her citizenship, she reversed the order and middle name came first. I think she will be the end of that foolishness. I just can’t imagine hitting anyone.
As I have said, in my younger days I had poor taste in women, My cat knew a stinker when he met one, and I eventually trusted his sense for character over my own.