On My Mind: 2-1-16

Daisy Ridley

Daisy - Daisy was a name I could never get behind. I thought it was too cutesy, too, well, flowery. But Star Wars breakout Daisy Ridley has really changed my opinion. She's spunky and sweet, and portrayed the passionate Rey wonderfully. Her full name is Daisy Jazz Isobel Ridley, and has five sisters, two of which are named Kika-Rose and Poppy Sophia. According to Daisy, J.J. Abrams loved saying her full name, stating it had a nice feminine first but was balanced out by the hard masculine Ridley.

Domhnall - Another actor in "The Force Awakens", an Irishman who's gotten tons of good work lately, including "The Revenant", "Ex Machina", and Oscar nominated "Brooklyn". He is still probably most famous, however, for portraying Bill Weasley, alongside his father, Brendan Gleeson, who played Mad-Eye Moody. Domhnall often describes the pronunciation of his name as "tonal with a D". It's the Gaelic form of Donald, which means "ruler of the world".

Double Names + Others - I went to a funeral last week for my mother's cousin, a woman I've never met but have heard a lot of stories about. It has never occurred to me before, but our family has an abundance of people with double names, or people who are referred to by their first and middle. They range from the very mundane Elizabeth Ann, Fred Allan, Roy Allan, to the slightly more unusual Edna Myrle (even my mother's cat had a double name - Wallace Earl). My mother commented on how she thinks it's because many people are juniors and it's easier to refer to them like that as opposed to calling everyone Little Roy and Big Roy. The funeral got us all talking about family, and more unusual names cropped up. Butch, called affectionately Butchie, Bark (full name Barkley), Mattie Dell, Gussie Odell, Jearldean etc. They were all very interesting! For more names from my family tree, you can refer to the posts I made during my Ancestry craze split into two sections - Maternal, and Paternal.

Milam - The cemetery was very old and hard to get to. Even though my feet were killing me because I decided to wear high-heeled boots, I was able to hobble over to see a few headstones. One had a man named Milam, middle name Carroll. I commented on how unusual it was, and my father said he'd seen the name, and then my grandmother's husband said it was pronounced "MY-lum". It's one I've never seen before, and now I've found out that it's a county in Texas, which makes a little sense. Milam county is named for Benjamin Rush Milam, a soldier and settler during the Texas Revolution.