Did you know that this week is Celebrate Your Name week? Although the week can be celebrated by anyone and everyone, it seems to me that genealogists are going to be especially interested in using this week as the perfect excuse to delve deeper into your own family history. It includes “Genealogy Saturday”!
Your name is special. It identifies who you are, and connects you to your immediate family, your relatives, and your ancestors. Nothing gets a person’s attention quicker than when they hear someone else calling out their name. Celebrate Your Name Week (CYNW) is all about making sure that you celebrate your very own, unique, wonderful, name.
Celebrate Your Name Week takes place every year from March 6 through March 12. Yesterday, March 6, 2011, was Namesake Sunday. If you missed it, that’s ok. You can still partake in the activities and have some fun with it. Namesake Sunday gives genealogists a good excuse to delve deeper into how you got your name.
Ask your parents, or grandparents, for stories about how your parents made the decision to give you the name they did. Maybe you were given a name that has been passed down through your family for generations. If so, then now is a great time to learn more about the other people in your family tree whom you share a name with. Make use of google, and find out if there is anyone else out there who has the exact same name as you.
My name came from my mother. She was about twenty-one years old when she was pregnant with me, and spent a lot of time watching television. I’ve been told that there were two commercials that caught her attention at the time. One was a Pampers commercial that featured an adorable baby girl named Jennifer. The other commercial was for a brand of baby furniture that included a crib, a changing table, and a dresser that all matched. I am guessing that my mother was quite enamored with this lovely furniture, which was called “Jenny Lynd”. As a result, she named me Jennifer Lynn.
Today, Monday, March 7, is Fun Facts Monday. Today is the day to look up some interesting facts about names, including your own. Take a moment to be amused by the strange names that celebrities bestow upon their children. Check out some of the odd names reported in the census. Are there songs that include your name?
My first name is Jennifer. There is a song called “Jenny (867-5309), by Tommy Tutone, that was popular in the 1980’s. Jennifer Lopez wrote a song called “Jenny From the Block”. The Killers have a song called “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine”. According to the website called “How Many of Me”, there are 1,452,004 people in the United States named Jennifer. There are nineteen people in America who have my first name and my maiden surname, and one hundred and thirteen people who have the same first name and surname that I have right now.
Image by saeru on Flickr