Interesting Family Facts

Many people these days are using sites like Ancestry.com to research their genealogy charts.  It seems like a fun and challenging hobby.  Up until a few years ago I never gave it much thought but as you get older your ancestry becomes more interesting.  With the Internet today future generations should have a boatload of information about today’s ancestors readily available, but looking for records of past generations can be challenging and I accidentally discovered why, at least in my family.

My mom’s name was Genevieve Corrine well that's what we were told but she preferred Corrine so she had her driver’s license state she was Corrine Genevieve.  I guess when you got a drivers license in 1934 they didn’t ask a lot of questions.  Apparently she wasn’t that fond of the name Corrine all that much either because she went by Sissy and my Dad (Henry) went by the nickname Sonny sometimes Hank by some of his friends from work.  Nicknames are common so that's no big surprise.  But it was a big surprise for us to find out after she passed away at age 90 that Mom's name wasn’t Genevieve Corrine and it wasn’t Corrine Genevieve either.  Her birth certificate showed my Mom’s (Sissy) given birth name as Geneva Cora.  Did she even know that?  I guess back in the day if you didn’t like your name you just changed it as many times as you liked.  My sister and I thought this was going to be a big problem for the life insurance and for the sale of her home because every important document in her name was Corrine Genevieve but no one even flinched which leads me to believe this was a fairly common occurrence many years ago.  

When I was in high school I took a Spanish class and one of our first lessons was to learn the days of the week in Spanish.  For so unknown reason I really liked the sound of Miercoles (Wednesday) so I decided that would be a cool alternate name especially if I ever lived in Spain.  I also liked the name Diego which roughly translated to Jim.  So from that time on my alternate name was Diego Miercoles.  Remember the show Dragnet, one of the detectives was Joe Friday, so I guess the name Diego Miercoles (Jim Wednesday) wasn't that unusual.  I didn’t really have much opportunity to use my alternate name but I was ready if an occasion arose.  Later in life when I took up wine making as a hobby I would use my alternate name (Diego Miercoles) as the vintner name.  I thought this was fun to choose a different name but little did I know at the time my mom had done this years ago apparently a couple of times.  So maybe renaming yourself is hereditary.

I also used my alternate name (Diego Miercoles) when I made a video about “Making a Banana”.

My sister Rose also had another name she preferred for herself which was Katie O’Brien.  Did I influence her to pick an alternate name or is that something all kids do?  Our heritage is German, Irish and French so at least my sister followed our heritage lines when she picked an alternate name and our Mom only changed her first name but did it numerous times.

Hmm, maybe I should check my birth certificate!

Adios

Diego Miercoles