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How important are names? It used to be common to want a baby boy, so that the family name could be passed on. Those were the days when women automatically gave up their last name with marriage. About 10 years after I got married, women started thinking about keeping their maiden name. When my daughter got married, her husband took our last name, without his parent’s approval. But the history of last names, for those of us who descended from Swedes, is a changing history. There, common farmers took their father’s first name, and added “son” on the end, and thereby changed the last name every generation. (Thus ending up with Gustavson, because Ed’s grandfather was the son of Gustav.) This happened at Ellis Island, in the first part of the 20th century, because there were too many Piersons (his actual name) that day on the rolls. Many immigrant names were misspelled or shortened, again because of workers at Ellis Island and other immigrant ports. My grandfather’s name was Gustave, and so I could have grown up with Gustavson for a last name, but in Sweden where his father came from, he had chosen “Blomquist”. I still use it as a middle name for my writing, because some know me only by that name. Translated, it means “blooming twig or limb.” My son Kent took it as the name of his publishing company. It seems to me that names are really important for only about a generation, maybe two, and not the name, but the honorable reputation is what needs to be passed on. --Cynthia
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January 2022
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