As a lifelong resident of Jefferson County and a scribe since my high school yearbook days, I know me some local names.
My first full-time job – at the old Daily News Democrat, after gaining a journalism degree at the University of Missouri in Columbia – couldn’t have been more name-rich. Besides covering county politics and courts, I wrote obits, birth announcements and accidents, and prepared for publication lists of marriages, divorces, arrests and honor rolls.
Whenever I came across a local last name I didn’t recognize, I’d remark about it. As the years accumulated, remarks became ever more rare. I thought I’d seen everything.
And then, the Leader was born, staffed by professional soulmates who, like me, find our community fascinating and appreciate its residents’ creativity and quirkiness.
In that spirit, we started compiling THE LIST. Actually, Laura Marlow, Queen of the Dead (obit writer) at the Leader for more than a quarter-century, gets the credit.
She began to make note of countians (or their relatives) with novel names, far afield from the traditional “Emily” and “Jacob” that typically sat atop the Social Security Administration’s annual list of most popular baby names across the country.
In 2018, “Emma” for girls and “Liam” for boys were the most prevalent names on registered births. We’ll get the 2019 update this spring.
The names we pulled from documents that came our way were extremely unlikely to catch Social Security’s attention, but they made our day.
Still do. There are hundreds of names listed by now, and when I need a day brightener, I pull up the list and roll around in it.
Good readers, in the dead of winter, you deserve a sample.
Maybe you’ll marvel, as we did, at the new parents who many decades ago looked at the little one made in their image and decided to call him …… Perpetual Brown.
Or these sibling groups: Jearld, Verl, Durrl and Harl – all boys – and Oma Olive, Orpha and Orvella – all girls.
Imagine standing on the back porch and calling those kids to dinner. The neighborhood probably loved it.
Mattie Drucilla Pendley had eight siblings, all of whom preceded her in death – Birty, Elsie, Annie, Silvie, Auston, Atley, Vester and Virgle. Mom and Dad had to put on their thinking caps to come up with some of those.
Les Moore’s parents get credit for cleverness, as do the parents of the Belfield twins, Lynn Gale and Glynn Dale.
Not so creative was the family of Younger Alfred Lucas, the son of Younger Alfred Lucas, or the parents of sisters Willodean and Willojane.
I adore these stand-alone names: Easter Weekly, Oddrey Kinch, Arvella Varble, Whisper Carston, Cheedle O. Thacker and Epiphany Dean Bonuglio.
Nicknames often make their way into obituaries, and these stood out to me: Lawrence “Short Life” Johnston, “Slick” Greasy, Hawley “Foggy” Forgotston and Slowman Churchill (although, in Slowman’s case, there were no quote marks in the obituary, so that could have been his birth certificate name).
I wanted to know the story behind this one: Lilburn E. “Man with the Suckers” Huskey, a De Soto man who died in 2018 at age 89.
Brother Wilfred, an older man at the church where I grew up, handed out peppermints to kids every Sunday from his suit pocket. Turned out, Lilburn had a similar habit (as reported in the expanded obituary Marlow wrote), so I can attest he was beloved.
Alliteration can be distinctive, too. We listed Gottlieb Gerkin, and predeceased parents Buford and Belvie Burrow from one obit and a predeceased foster sister from another, Mae Muzzey Manos.
The listing for Venus Cernicek, a De Soto woman who died in 2002 at age 85, always makes me think of my mother. Venus was preceded in death by siblings Elzie, Melzie, Runnie and Flossie (among others).
My mother’s given name was Flossie Muriel Akins, a moniker she hated. Born on her family’s Bloomsdale farm in 1926, she said her name came at her father’s insistence.
In fact, he might as well have named her “Quarrel,” because even though my mother claimed her parents never fought in front of their nine kids, I think they made an exception when it came to baby Flossie.
Grandpa named her in honor of an old girlfriend. And while “Flossie” is more than unusual in 2020, where “Olivia” and “Harper” rule, a century ago, it wasn’t that weird. Social Security reports that “Flossie” – meaning “flowering,” a diminutive for Florence – reached its peak of popularity in 1905, probably about the time my grandad’s erstwhile girlfriend was a fetching toddler.
I always wondered if the story about how Mom got her name was based in fact. I mean, really, who would do that?
Doubts were laid to rest, however, when a friend of my mother’s stopped by the Leader one day after my mother had passed away. I told Eunice the story and she laughed.
“Oh, it’s true, all right,” Eunice declared. “The original ‘Flossie’ was my mother.”
I like my mom’s name, and it never made me think of a cow, as she complained.
But much as I admired Flossie Muriel (pronounced “Merle” in Bloomsdale vernacular), her name just doesn’t hold a candle to Epiphany Dean Bonuglio.
