Joyce ................

This blog is going to be about names ....yes I know I have already written a blog about that but I must admit names do fascinate me , maybe as I had 3 of them (at least) before I was a week old! 

On my first day in this world I was called Natasha , the second it had changed to Tanya and then on the third I was finally given the name Petra as well as 2 middle names and a double barrelled surname !! So yes , I've got my fair share.

Recently a day trip to a local village led to me starting to research my family tree, a person with my Mums maiden surname on a war memorial made me wonder if he was related and so it began. I concentrated on my Mums paternal and maternal sides but only my Dads maternal side as his paternal side had been researched right back to 1066 by a distant relative. 

With all of my Grandparents long deceased my only starting points were my parents own memories , some birth and death certificates and an Uncle who had also started along the family tree branches.
I made great progress , going back several generations but it was made difficult at times by names not being as they were remembered.

My own Nan was known by everyone as Joyce , despite her name actually being Hannah ( She didn't like that name) and I suspect even some friends who had known her for decades were surprised to see her real name on her coffin . 
This seems to have been very commonplace in the old days . A great number of my male relatives on both sides were called Charles , Frederick and William or a combination of all of those names and understandably if there were 3 generations of Williams living under one roof then second names were used instead , therefore William Jnr became Charles and his Son , Frederick . In fact my own Mum believed her Granfathers name to be Frederick when it was actually Charles !! 

So this has led to some confusion along some branches of the family tree although not entirely . Some more unusual names were Elijah , Caleb and Moses (all siblings) and a female on my Dads side was called Merci 

I can only imagine the reaction in a small Suffolk farming village when that was announced "Merci ? Merci ?what's wrong with calling the baby Joyce ?!?!" Xxx