Names

We've been having a lot of discussions in the family about names which of course is happening because we have had several new babies recently with another on the way.

This got me thinking about a conversation I had with my mother a few years before she passed away in 2011. For some reason we were talking about baby names and she told me about her sadness when she lost the boy baby between me and Betsy due to a miscarriage. If that baby had survived then he would have been named George after his father and grandfather as I was. Then I would have been named Tom after our grandfather and great-grandfather as my brother Tom was. So I said it I was Tom than what would he have been named. She had a twinkle in her eye and I wasn't sure if she was joking or not but she said he would have been named Elmer after my father's best friend. We grew up spending a lot of time with Claire and Elmer and they were at many family gatherings and vacations. So Tom would have been Elmer Emery.

Cathy was named for our grandmother and Rita was named for a good friend of my mother's. Dan was probably the only one of us that was named just because everyone liked the name. I never heard of any other reason or a person he might have been named after.

We also talked about my sister that died as an infant. Her name was Mary Elizabeth. Mom always had dreams and what she called visions concerning this daughter. She would have been Mary Beth Emery. Most large Irish Catholic families had a child named Mary and of course we had Aunt Mary who helped raise mom.

So if all her babies had lived there would have been eight of us... Betsy, George, Tom, Elmer, Cathy, Rita, Mary Beth and Dan.