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Getting to Know You: Names and Family

(15 posts) (9 voices)

Started 3 years ago by M. J. Young
Latest reply from M. J. Young

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M. J. Young
Moderator
I realized in someone's thread that I had a really cool idea for a twist to toss his direction--but it would require me to know something about him, and I couldn't ask him outright without giving away the twist. It occurred to me, too, that I have wanted to know things about players in the past, and not been able to determine them easily. Thus I am starting a new set of sticky threads specifically to get personal details from people.

No you do not have to participate, but doing so will enhance the ability of your referee to run your game. And no, you do not have to answer all of the questions nor all of the threads to participate. I recognize that people do want a certain amount of privacy, and might not be comfortable posting personal details of their lives on the Internet. So post what you want, and leave the rest for guesses.

If you are not playing in a Multiverser game, this thread is not intended for you. If you wish to play, you should start with the threads Yes, You Can Play, But.... and The Character Generation Thread to begin your involvement, then come back to these threads to expand your identity.

This thread is about yourself and your family, and particularly the names that are connected to you. It will help in creating divergent selves, in that the referee can play with introducing other family members, or tweaking the family by adding or removing people (your great uncle Joe was killed in World War II, don't you remember?)

Questions to consider:
- What else might you have been named? Do you know what names your parents considered for you, and why these were rejected?
- What are the names of your parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, the family names? If you are hesitant to include specific names, you can use descriptives such as "a very Italian ethnic surname" or "a popular given name among the Hispanic community" to give the flavor without revealing the identity.
- Do you have siblings, and what are their names? Do you know what their names might have been?
- If you are married, what is the name of your spouse? If you are "as good as married", what is the name of your "significant other"?
- Do you have children, and what are their names? Are there stories behind these, or alternative names, such as the name for the son you never had?
- For those who are no longer alive, when and how did they die? In particular, if you lost a young family member, this might be interesting if the death never happened.
I will begin.

--M. J. Young
Sun Sep 21 2008 6:24 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

Had I been a girl, my name would have been Amy.

My mother wanted to name me for my father. He was Cornelius Bryant Young Jr, but technically was the third of that name. Since his grandfather died before his father was born, his father (my grandfather) always went by Cornelius Bryant Young, Sr. I would have been Cornelius Bryant Young IV, by my mother's reckoning. She wanted to name me this, and call me Neil--but my father, who was always C.B. or "Seeb", does not like nicknames, and always said, "If you're going to call him Neil, name him Neil."

I was named for an elderly coworker of my mother, who came to her assistance when her boss was overworking her during her pregnancy. He was no longer at the company when she returned to work, and never learned of the honor. It was before that time an uncommon name, but unfortunately due to some soap opera character or star rose into prominence the year I was born, being one of the most common names in my elementary school class.

The battle to name someone Cornelius Bryant Young IV continued, and my father remained obstinate. My brother two years younger got the name Roy Neil Young, and my little brother four years behind him wound up Neil Bryant Young. Yes, he is Neil Young, but not the singer.

My sister was born between the two, a year and a half after my brother.

It should be mentioned that my mother had two older brothers, John and Bob, and by the time my sister was born John was father of Paul, Gary, and Alan, and Bob father of Peter, Ron, and Bob, and there were already two sons in my mother's family. Their father (my mother and her brothers) was eldest of five boys, no girls, and so boys seemed to gallup on the family (although my mother had two girl cousins and my sister has one second cousin who is a girl, a bit younger than she). There was no girl's name selected for my sister, who wore a hospital bracelet reading "Nameless Young". She was eventually named Annette Georgette Young, and since she married in Taiwan she retains her birth name, although her sons all have their father's name, Kuo.

I have five nephews--two from Roy and three from Annette--and one neice, from Neil. I have five sons, Ryan, Kyler, Tristan, Evan, and Adam, each of whom has two middle names drawn from members of the family (including Cornelius Bryant for one of them--my father still objected to naming a son Cornelius an and calling him something else, in this case Cory). Most know my wife's name is Janet, but she would rather I not tell more about her side of the family, as unlike me she does not consider herself a public person.

My uncle John and my grandfathers are the only persons listed here who have died, and they were all quite elderly. I have no grandparents left, and have lost touch with branches of the family beyond the immediate. My father had a sister, recently deceased, who had a son and a daughter, of whom I know very little but that they are still down south somewhere in Mississippi.

Who's next?

--M. J. Young

Sun Sep 21 2008 6:25 pm #
Kurt W.
Member

Two names that popped up were "Petunia" and "Joe". My grandfather persistantly, wanting me to be named Joe, called me it as a baby in front of my parents. It produced my middle name, Joseph, so that he'd shut up about it. I'm not Petunia because I'm a dude. The reason why my parents didn't name me Joseph is because they wanted another "K" name in the family. My name means "Curageous Advice" and "Wisdom" in most baby books.

All members of my family and extended family have generic American names, like: Cliff, Judy, Richard, Rita, Brenda, et cetera.

I have a brother named Kyle and a half-sister (which I still consider a full sister) Kim. Kim's around 28 now, Kyle's around 20 now, and I'm 18. I'm the youngest.

I'm in a relationship at the moment with a girl named Rochelle; however, we're in a long-distance one where we visit as often as we can. If you want to count this as the 'significant other', I have no problem with that. Her name means "Little Rock," so she's attained the nickname "Rock."

I don't have children at the moment; however, I have thought about names. For boys, I like the names "Gale" and "Cliff." Cliff would be after my father. I also like the names "Rose" (after my mother's maiden name) for a girl.

My grandfather on my father's side is dead, from old age. There haven't been any other deaths in my family that I know about. A reason for that might be that we've generally moved away from where all of our family lives. We used to live close, but the money was simply elsewhere.

Sun Sep 21 2008 8:02 pm #
johnosevens
Member

No other names were ever considered for me. My mother intuitively knew I would be male, and I was Harry Eugene right from then, after my maternal great-grandfather and grandfather (though it works out that my paternal grandfather's name also Anglicizes as Harry by sheer coincidence).

Everyone in my mother's family has very generic British-Irish names, and we are ALL three-named people. My mother's name is actually French, though no one realized it at the time. My maternal grandparents are both still living, though no one above them is. I failed to mention it in my family thread, but my grandmother is one of six sisters.

My father's family favors Anglicized Greek names. My paternal grandparents and all previous generations are deceased.

I am an only child.

My S.O.'s name is Melinda and she has two sisters, her twin Michelle (who goes by Shelley), and elder sister Page (who insists her name be spelled with no "i" in the middle).

I have no children. I have two cats named Gavin and Jack. If I ever had a child, I would at this point most likely be adopting. If it ever did come to pass that I would have a child of my own, I would favor the name Julian Lucas for a boy, or Samantha Caitlin for a girl. If I had more than one of either I would have to come up with something else, or leave the name of the second entirely to my S.O. if I got the first all to myself.

Mon Sep 22 2008 1:48 am #
JohnA1nut
Member

I have an older brother named Richard Lee. He and I have different fathers, but he's my brother. He went by Lee when he was a kid, because he couldn't spell Richard (he's not too bright sometimes) We still call him Lee. I have two full sisters named Colleen and Angela. Colleen was named after my mom's childhood babysitter.

I was named John Edward Cross II, after my father's father. (You have no idea how weird it feels to look at a gravestone and see your full name on it <shudder>) My father's name was Dale Roy Cross, and I've always said that if I had a son, I would name him Dale Roy Cross II. Also, if I had two sons, I would name the second Kyle Reese Cross. He's my absolute favorite movie hero of all time.

My mom wanted to name me Egbert. THANK GOD dad talked her out of that!!!!!!!!!!!

My mom's maiden name is Alice Annette Hupp. She legally dropped the Alice, and is simply Annette Cross now.

I do not have any kids, and have really only seriously considered marriage once. I do not want to have kids because psychosis is hereditary, and I do not wish to pass it on to a child. I would adopt if given the option.

Mon Sep 22 2008 3:53 pm #
KellyKeck
Member

I don't know much about names my parents considered for me, but that would be an interesting thing to ask. I know that my mother didn't want to give me a name that ended with "a," since it would've rhymed with my last name, Tessena. Incidentally, that's a name that no one outside my family seems to be able to spell or pronounce. It's an Italian name, but I have a hunch that the spelling or the pronunciation changed at some point. It's pronounced "Tuh-SEE-nuh," which I'd think would be more likely to be spelled as Tacina in Italian. My senior English teacher delighted in calling me TESS-uh-nuh, largely because it annoyed me. Ironically, he had a longer harder-to-pronounce name than I did--it was even another Italian name.

My middle name is Lynne, which comes from my aunt's middle name (she's Barbara Lynne). That "e" at the end is important--they got it wrong on my birth certificate, and my mom got it corrected. In college, I had a roommate named Kelley. To make it even more amusing, her middle name was "Lynn" with no "e."

I have a younger brother, Andrew Richard. Andrew, I think was just a name my parents liked. Richard is my maternal grandfather's name.

My dad's name is Michael Joseph. He's got two brothers, Tom and Terry. My paternal grandmother was Ameliann (pronounced Amelia Ann). My dad's dad's name was Myron. He died when my dad was young, thirteen or so, I think.

My mom is Carol Anne, and her brother is another Michael. And there's her sister, Barbara, who goes by Barb. My maternal grandmother's name is Joanne. Cousins on that side are Stephanie and Daniel (who go by Steph and Dan), and Joseph (who goes by Joe).

On my dad's side, the cousins are Matthew (Matt) and Jennifer (Jen), Terry Jr., and Bruce.

Wed Sep 24 2008 6:51 pm #
KellyKeck
Member

Oh, one more bit about my name. When I was a kid, my mom was a Buffalo Bills fan, and for some reason, I despised them with a passion. It may have been just that hating the Bills was a family pastime for everybody *but* my mom, especially when they lost four straight Superbowls.

To tease me, my mom would say that she'd named me after Jim Kelly, the quarterback. At the time, I thought she was serious (not realizing that he wasn't even *in* the NFL until two years after I was born), and was horrified. And she'd refer to him as "your Uncle Jim" to further pick on me.

(If it's not readily apparent, my family frequently shows love with teasing and smart comments. Nothing mean-spirited, but we like to pick on each other.)

Wed Sep 24 2008 6:56 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

And that's exactly the sort of thing I can see Graeme using in your current world.

--M. J. Young

Thu Sep 25 2008 4:22 am #
Anonymous
Unregistered

I would've been called Michaël, if not my uncle had just had a child that was named that and who came to pass shortly after birth. It would have been to painfull. So my father chose Nikolaj, still resembling the name. And it seemed that at that moment he was favoring Russian names, because if I had been a girl, my name would have been Natasha. I was the first child of Frank Bourguignon and Frieda (actually Frederica) van Eck.

My fathers favor for Russian names didn't last though. Because two and a half years later, my sister was born, and named Kathleen. A German name. As far as I know there were no alternatives here.

Then, much later (about six years), my youngest brother was born, given the name Joachim. (Hebrew this time) His name was chosen so late that our parents almost seemed to go with the hints of an eight-year old and a 6 year old to call him Franky! I'm glad they didn't.

I think I'm going to live it at that for now.

Tue Dec 23 2008 11:30 pm #
Brock
Member

You may notice a couple of my friends are military-bent. This isn't a coincidence-I took Junior ROTC for 2 years, I met them there.

Friends-Chris is a genius when it comes to explosives. He knows how to turn a pen, some bleach, a rusty washer (the round metal thing, not the machine), and some other chemical (forgot the name) into a bomb that can blow up a city block (and it still looks like a pen. He SAYS he has only used it for excavation in some forest cave he was digging once, and he *can* camouflage it if necessary were his words) He is intelligent, but speaks and acts contrary to that so people don't ask him for help with their homework. He is a high-blue belt in Tae Kwon Do. He also has had 127 girlfriends and 2 boyfriends at various points-it just isn't working for him. He describes himself as a man-whore (jokingly), and dreams of going into military explosives. The Army rejected him due to eyesight issues that are FULLY CORRECTED by his glasses.

CJ is rather like me in many ways, we share the same interests in roleplaying, learning, and self-improvement. He also has had more than his fair share of bullies, but unfortunately for the bullies, CJ is acquainted with how to fight "dirty". That is, no holds barred, all out mayhem. He told me about his last fight in middle school, in which he tried to bite the throat of his assailant. That kind of thing. He intends to enter the military as well. He happens to be the 'default GM' of his friends, everyone always assumes he will be GM, because he is so very good at it.

Edgar is one of the nicest guys around. His problem is he seems to care more for the people around him than he does himself. He was at some point suicidal, and goes to Greater Lakes every week, which is a counseling place to help people cope with life. He is much better now, but he has a very difficult time saying 'no' to any request from what I have seen. We get along well because I am also pretty free with others, giving away things I don;t need, letting people I barely know play my Xbox, and so on, but he is much more giving. He is technically homeless, and sleeps in other people's houses in exchange for chores and the like. He stays here frequently.

Kelsie is a sweetheart, through and through. She is a pacifist vegetarian that always has a kind word. She admires intellect, and claims she isn't all that smart; I correctly pointed out that she is, and told her about the multiple intelligences, and about Einstein's apparent intellect when he was younger. She IS intelligent; but in a way oriented toward interpersonal skills and creativity, not logic and math and such. She has a boyfriend named Darren whom I don't know very well, and she just graduated High School and I didn't have her number or email. It is likely if I want to talk to her again I'll have to use an online search engine to find her; but I did give her my email. I have a bit of a crush on her, but she already had a boyfriend, so i couldn't ask her out even if I had money to pay for a date.

Family I will cover later; I'm getting tired; I didn't sleep much last night and I am not thinking straight.

Thu Jul 2 2009 1:14 am #
Brock
Member

WARNING: If you have children in the room who might read this, don't let them. it is very depressing and I wouldn't want them reading this.

Hoo boy....Family. Well, I am certainly able to talk about this now, though I couldn't before. I'll start with the pleasant side. Thank my therapist, eh?

Robin Petersdorf (my mom) was the third child in the pack o' five; I have an uncle, and aunts Lorrie, Cherry (yes, Cherry, pronounced Sherry spelled Cherry), and Pamela. My grandfather is/was (last I heard he's on his deathbed, he could be dead right now) a roaring drunkard, and had an unfortunate habit of venting his rage on the bodies of his family. Cherry somehow, through superhuman effort and a skill at making herself unnoticed, survived to eighteen and simply moved away, got a job, lived OK for awhile, until she got herself her very own abuser, but his is the kind of emotional blackmail: He has ties in several legal departments I cannot mention, and could easily get any court case turned in his favor, or so Cherry believes. She was forced to turn her children into his custody, and he threatens to take the children away from her forever if she doesn't do what he says. She takes care of them and does all the cooking and cleaning and housework and holds down a full time job (usually), and she is allowed to see them. It hasn't been bad lately, but I forgot what led to that. Pamela turned to drugs at some point, in part because they let her drift off, but mostly because she was in constant pain from a disease that is now identified; she uses marijuana to relieve it. I won't say much more about her. My uncle, who I believe wants privacy, will not be detailed. My mom, on the other hand....She snapped. She was hit on the head for dropping a soup ladle, and she went ballistic. She beat the unholy HE double hockeysticks out of him, and he never touched her again. A few years later, he caught her in bed with her boyfriend, and pulled a gun on them. The police heard it, arrested him, and put all the children in foster care. For some, including my mom, foster care was just as much a hell as home was. My mom says at one point a girl lit mom's bed on fire for stealing a necklace she didn't actually steal....while my mom was in it.

Remember when I said i would talk about the pleasant side first? That was the pleasant side...because I didn't witness it personally. Lorrie moved on to be a nervous mousy looking lady that never ever unpacks her belongings. She is ready to run at any moment. She had a couple bad marriages, but her problems are more in her head, unlike Cherry. Cherry is the sanest of them all, and has her problems wrestled to a standstill...except for a phantom blood clot that could stop her heart at any moment and her medical won't cover a full body scan to determine where it moved...and she can't use one of her arms without extreme pain, but it was almost amputated because of whatever that problem was, so that's a bit of 2-edged blessing...Plus her kids could be snatched from her at any moment....Pamela got mildly involved in the drug trade, but only a little bit of marijuana stuff, don't know too much about it...And my mom, well, she met Steven George Nelson, my OTHER namesake.

Steve is a schizophrenic, but it wasn't readily apparent at first. In fact, he seemed like just another guy, but as he aged, he got screwier and screwier. My only memories of him are his impression of the Scottish Devil ("you's best be getting a drink of water, now, it's goina be yur last for a veerry long toime"), which I guess was supposed to be funny, and hundreds of instances of abuse to my mother. I remember very few instances of him hitting me; I get the feeling he didn't want to hurt the 'honored first-born son'. I also remember a few vague times of him and mom singing, going firewalking, and a picnic, and my absolute most vivid memory of him: Him picking my mom up by the BOTTOM part of the throat and throwing her across the room, (which, incidentally, causes much more pain and trauma than from the middle, but is harder to do), because she wanted to help discipline me for some thing or another. He eventually left of his own accord, after having pulled a gun on my mom and asking her why he should not splatter her brains on the windshield.

At first, I started subconsciously trying to replace him myself, for some reason thinking my mom was supposed to be treated that way, until i suddenly, I don't know how to explain it, snapped fully AWAKE for the first time in years. From that point on, I vowed that I would never, EVER do anything like what he had done. It;s like I had been in a daze, still operating at my normal state of intelligence but with no soul, no life, and then I AWOKE! It is reminiscent of the Christian saying of being saved.

One year later, he was put in prison for attempted murder, he put some guy in a wheelchair, I have a copy of the case file around here somewhere, but I can't recall the guy's name...I thought it prudent not to contact him, and it isn't my place to apologize for my dad anyway.

Another year passed, and Bill entered our lives. My former stepfather, William Wirth, Jr., and father of my beloved half brother, also named William. At this point, my keen intuition was mostly fully formed, even though I was only 9, and every instinct when I met him screamed GRAVE DANGER! With typical adolescent reasoning, I tried to drive him off. To that effect, i told my mom exactly what I thought of him, told her he would be druggie and abuser, and when she didn't believe me, I kicked him squarely in the testicles 9 times. My mom managed to convince him not to press charges, and he was a perfect gentleman until the marriage. Then, he slowly got back into drinking. The bills came up short. We lost out house, began moving from apartment to apartment. Then, he showed his true colors, that I had known was there all along, and he proceeded to make our lives a living hell for 5 years.

[EDIT: For about a month was the barely keeping calm.] Every instinct in me screamed to end it, somehow, someway. Yet somehow, I managed an outward veneer of calm. No one knew I was boiling inside-except for her. I can't remember her name, in fact I can barely remember her smile, and that was the distinguishing characteristic as I recall. I remember long black hair. She was a friend of mine in middle school, and she knew right away I was about to implode on the inside with one look at me. I never knew how. She kept me from going over the edge....and when she disappeared one day, and a peer told me she was dead in a crash (apparently jokingly, she moved and told a friend to give me a note), I snapped in the opposite way one would imagine. I went straight calm. I went home and went to sleep, and stopped functioning completely. No amount of beatings could get me out of bed. During all this time, my mom was suffering just as much, but she desperately knew she could cure him, which she now knows she can't, the trap of the abused.

When I snapped, my mind went AWOL again. I began blacking out, waking up with a knife in my hand and bill;s face carved into the furniture. This lasted for only a week or so. I manifested sleepwalking more than ever before, which I have since stopped completely. I began swinging between half thought through plots to kill Bill, and half thought plans to kill myself, and in my haze of thought I even once thought of killing my mom; the horror of thinking of killing the one person that means the absolute most to me in all the world, one who means more than I do, made me wake up a little. I calmed, and began to THINK again. The innocent, bright eyed little boy with dreams of going to outer space was gone, but so was the demon; I calmed down and knew that I must conquer myself, truly master my own mind. I made my second most binding promise of all promises: I WILL NOT EVER ALLOW SOMEONE TO CONTROL MY FAMILY OR FRIENDS! My number one priority is the defense of Life, Limb, and Livelihood! I will not rest until Bill is gone! I will never break my word, I do not lie, I absolutely will not bear losing my self again!

Shortly thereafter, Bill left, cheating on my mom with some lady named Evelyn. We moved to a new house while he was gone, and we never heard much more out of him. Last I heard, he is making Evelyn's life a living hell, and going in and out of prison.

I'll post about my cousins later, who have had a MUCH better childhood.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, my period of mental instability lasted about a month, I was surprisingly able to cope until we were starving and my only friend disappeared

Thu Jul 2 2009 3:17 pm #
Brock
Member

The lesson i learned from this is you must conquer your problems, make them your own, make them your strength, and only then can your soul retain it's value.

I have often been asked, especially by my therapist, whom I did not have long, how I reconstructed my own mind so easily, and kept my core values, once the stressor was removed. Until a couple years ago, I could not have told you; I needed a lot of time to define it.

I partitioned my mind, with that first oath. I took what is essentially me, my values, my dream that I had to be the first on Mars, everything that was fundamentally me, and locked it away in my own mind, where no one could get to it, not even me. It stayed there, barely touched by the abuse until it melded with my own experiences up to that point, melding into the new me. That is the second time I woke up, and I declared THAT WAS ENOUGH!

Thu Jul 2 2009 3:22 pm #
Max
Member

Interestingly, what you have said about mind partitioning can may be one of the solution to my problem in the game. So many coincidences with this world.

Thu Jul 2 2009 4:54 pm #
Jhiaxus
Member

I hard a hard day of work so with it slowing down and relaxing I figured I would finally answer this thread, since my story really hasn't advanced far since asking for this.

As for possible names, David was one, but I think between my mother's miscarriage of a brother, and her best friend choosing it for a name if her child, it didn't happen.

As far as I know, my mother was the first person in NJ, to win no visitation, a complete name change of the child in court. My full name is on my character sheet in other parts of the forum, and it's my mother's maiden name. I'm happy, my father's last name is very Lithuanian and happy to keep my Irish last name. I have nothing to do with my father, never met him, talked with him on the phone a few times and met his father, likely never will (by my choice).

No siblings, but the miscarriage above described. I don't know if it was certain it was going to be a male or not, I do know it would have been an older sibling of 2 years.

I am not married, nor have I really been close. Although I am not picky about a gf, I am picky about someone who is more than that.

I am an only child or an only child, so no brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, neices, nephews. I have second cousins, but they are as old or older my mother was.

Cancer runs in the family, but also heavy, heavy smoking, and drinking did as well (Mother's Side), Father's side, men live into the 90's. I don't smoke at all, rarely drink.

I think that's the relevant information.

Tue Aug 31 2010 7:50 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

I figured I would finally answer this thread, since my story really hasn't advanced far since asking for this.

Thanks for answering these. I suppose the irony is that the inspiration for starting them was that I was hoping the ancestry one would give me a link I could use to say you were a direct descendant of Uther Pendragon when you were doing the sword in the stone thing. I decided that you were (which is why the sword would move for you when you touched it, but not for Geneice or Merlin).

But that's all good and useful information (I read the other threads already).

Your comment about being promoted for good performance and then fired for bad performance laterally reminds me of a story my brother tells. He was working for Home Depot in what I guess would be a corporate middle management position. They had a big shakeup and fired a lot of people, including him. A week later they fired the company president. My brother says he likes to think they realized they got the wrong guy.

--M. J. Young

Wed Sep 1 2010 5:59 am #

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