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My grandfather's name was Delmar... the whole thing Delmar Duane Bryant. He went by Duane, I don't blame him.
I have a 2nd great grandfather Odker... Odker Elisha Pool.
This is a surname, but I have a line of ancestors with the surname Busby... A Jacob Busby, John Busby. Always found Busby an odd name. On that thought I have some Quaker "Hussey" ancestors, leading back to a Christopher Hussey.
I have a 4th great grandfather Toliver Roberts. In his Union Ciivil War pension it lists "aka Solver Roberts". I have one picture of him where he and two women standing with him were both smiling, I don't see too many smiling pictures from that time.
The whole give your child the first name of a surname of your ancestry produces a lot of weird ones. I have a multiple times great uncle named Valadingham. I have a 3rd great grandfather named Hood S Baker, his mother's surname was Hood. I have a 8th great grandfather named Lyddall Bacon... Lyddall being his grandmother's surname. Have a multiple times great uncle named Vining Cooper (his mother's surname was Vining). Another multiple great uncle, a Mason Bryant... I suspect a relation to a Mason family.
Similarly I have ancestry of the surname Wiseman... an ancestor was named William Wiseman Everett... Just find that an amusing middle name, people might assume your parents were a bit presumptuous.
A funny one, which was a line I had originally thought was my Drakes but turned out not to be lead up to a Sir Francis Drake. No not the famous one, the man was literally given the name Sir Francis lol.
Of course there's a lot of names that were common in the past, or common for what would now be considered the wrong sex. I have a 5th great grandfather named Hillary Hughes.
This isn't an unusual name, but a story about a surname I found amusing... I have an ancestor named Nancy Jane Bear, apparently her granddaughter always said her grandmother was a bear (yes it's a bad pun lol).
One I quite like was Casparius... from a dutch descended ancestor Casparius Garretson
Another one that was more common in the past... Isham/Isam/Isum/Isom. My paternal 2nd great grandfather was Isom Paul Langley, my 4th and 5th great grandfathers were Isham Langley Sr. and Jr. All of them appear with the different variation of spellings. It wasn't one of the more common names, sometimes given via the surname Isham... My Langley's might come from Virginia, possibly not too far from the Isham family so it's possible it connects there.
I have an ancestor named Kinchin/Kincheon Matthews.
A one more common for people of a certain descent but Balser/Balzer/Balthazar Huffman/Hoffman
I have examples from at least two of my lines in which a male child was named George Washington _____(last name). Both were from the post-revolutionary Federal period. Must have been a lot of awe for our first President. Then in a third line, someone named their son George Washington ____ in the mid 1800s. They had just come to the US from England, and apparently loved and embraced being Americans.
Maybe strange is the wrong word. Today, those are stereotypical "white" names. They don't sound like a black couple and much less slaves. She was listed as "Becky" in some records, which is a joke today.
Same goes for Carry and Matilda.
But slaves were usually given typical "white" names.
One of the slaves is called "Mitilde" which is just a different spelling for Matilda, and another one is called Rebecca.
(These manifests are not of slaves being imported from Africa - the manifest is dated well after that was illegal. These are manifests of slave owners travelling with their slaves: https://www.archives.gov/atlanta/fin...lave-manifests )
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And "Cruz" is an odd, non-English sounding surname. Where would she have gotten such a surname?
She (or her ancestors) might have gotten it from their slave owner. While Cruz is a Spanish/Portuguese name and most slave owners were stereotypically English, there are a few slave owners on the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules with the surname Cruz. Additionally, a lot of light skinned "mulattos" would try to pass themselves off as Latino, so she or an ancestor might have changed their name to Cruz (which is a super common name in Spanish cultures) to pass themselves off as Latino. Bella da Costa Greene was a perfect example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_da_Costa_Greene
I have examples from at least two of my lines in which a male child was named George Washington _____(last name). Both were from the post-revolutionary Federal period. Must have been a lot of awe for our first President. Then in a third line, someone named their son George Washington ____ in the mid 1800s. They had just come to the US from England, and apparently loved and embraced being Americans.
That's funny. We also have a George Washington________ in the 1800s.
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