A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches,
and loving favour rather than silver and gold. (Proverbs 22:1 KJV)
My inspiration for this article came from a visit I made earlier today to Union County High School. There I began talking with office staff about mistakes that are made with respect to people’s names.
An article of mail had arrived for band instructor Hunter Collins. The package was not addressed to “Hunter”, but to “Hunger”.
Receptionist Destinee McCravey revealed that her last name is sometimes mispronounced as “McGravy”. She should sell that copyright to McDonald’s!
Many years ago, when I was principal of Sharps Chapel Elementary, a letter arrived for Mrs. Lisa Brantley. Her first name was misspelled as Mrs. “Lish” Brantley. From that day forward I called her Lish. She told me that her mother once asked her why I always called her “Lush!”
The first director of Centralized Finance for Union County was Ann Dyer. A letter addressed to her once came to the Union County Board of Education. It was incorrectly addressed to Ann “Buyer”. Somehow that seemed somewhat appropriate for a person involved in finance.
Several years ago my mother was looking for a house to rent. A former school bus driver of mine was helping with the search. He found a house and gave Mother the phone number to contact the prospective landlord, Margaret Ann “Thackery”. I didn’t believe I’d ever heard of or met the lady. It turns out this lady worked at a doctor’s office where the Maynardville Public Library/Union County Centralized Finance Office is now located, next to the Maynardville Volunteer Fire Department. I knew the lady as Ann Thacker.
It seems to have been common practice a couple of generations ago in the hollers of Union County to pronounce every last name with an “s” on the end. Jeff Cheek would have been called Jeff “Cheeks”, Eugene Brantley would have been called Eugene “Brantleys”, and so forth. It also seemed that every possible female name ending with the letter “a” was pronounced with a long “e” sound at the end. Accordingly, my maternal grandfather’s fourth wife was called “Surrey” rather than Sarah, my great-aunt Lidia was called “Liddy”, Martha was “Marthie”, women named Amanda were almost always called “Mandy”, and so on.
My father had three sisters that lived to maturity. Their actual names were Vallie, Fleetie, and Duskie (interestingly, all of these, their actual names, did indeed end in a long “e”). Fleetie’s name always seemed to be the most misrepresented. At my uncle Rob Mincey’s funeral, the minister was reading the obituary, and when he came to Fleetie’s name, he pronounced it “Mrs. Flutie Thomas”. That seems to be the way the obituary was actually printed. Most likely the person who wrote the obituary did not have Zaner-Bloser cursive penmanship, and the two “e’s” looked like a small cursive “u”. Fleetie was somewhat flustered, saying “They mess up my name every time.”
I once told an acquaintance the names of my three aunts. He seemed intrigued. “Vallie, Fleetie, and Duskie, they make beautiful music together. Vallie, Fleetie, and Duskie. He eventually got his tongue tangled, and said Vallie, “Deetie”, and “Fluskie”. My aunts would have been scandalized to know that we had such a good laugh over that misspeak.
Oh well. Just imagine going through life with a last name “Mincey”. I’ve been called “Munsey” and “Misery” a few times in life. When I was principal of Sharps Chapel Elementary several years ago, a parent told me, “Mincey is just a cross between Muncey and Nicely.” It is interesting that I have cousins who are Munceys (or Munseys, depending on the spelling). My paternal grandmother was a Nicely. Some with that surname spelled it Nicley (reversing the “e” and “l”). There is a story that this was a result of the Civil War. The faction of the family that supported the Northern cause spelled it one way, while the family’s Southern sympathizers spelled it the other. I suppose the family branch that supported neither side chose to spell their name “Knisley”.
As usual, I leave you with thoughts shared with me via email.

I changed my iPod's name to Titanic.
It's syncing now.

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order:
"abstemious" and "facetious."

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous":
tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them, “Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down.” It's where we get the phrase “mind your P's and Q's”.

NO TRUE SOUTHERNER WOULD EVER SAY:
Who gives a rip who won the Civil War?

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 2
What is the act of setting fire to a mortgage? (BERNADETTE—The act of torching a mortgage.) (See next week’s article for the answer.)
QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 3
What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary? (See next week’s article for the answer.)