names

#52Ancestors: Delilah Townsend Cornell and her namesake [Tweet this]

Onomastics, or the study of the origin, history, and use of proper names, is sometimes a useful indicator of relationships in genealogy research, but in stories where identities and relationships are well established by other documented facts, a naming pattern may end up overlooked as mildly interesting but irrelevant. Do those cases warrant a closer look at the onomastic evidence?

According to the place history Landmarks of Steuben County, New York, Delilah Townsend was the first wife of Smith Cornell and died in 1829. The 1830 Federal Census indicates five sons and two daughters, but so far, I only know the identities of four of the sons: Smith, Hiram, Socrates, and Hamilton.

Hamilton T. Cornell lived an adventurer’s life—or perhaps a scoundrel’s life, depending on your perspective—but either way, the word “wanderlust” was coined for such as him. He left his wife and six of his eight children behind in New York to seek his fortunes—fortunes that involved lawsuits, miner’s camps, miracle elixir sales, and making it all the way to California with two more wives and at least five more children (see: 1850, 1855, 1860, 1860, 1870, 1875, 1880) in his wake.

One of them, he named Delilah.

Onomastic evidence can take many forms. Traditional naming patterns can provide clues to parents names. Names might hold clues to the parents’ priorities (as with Biblical names, for example). Namesakes can hint at the regard parents may have held for the honoree.

I find it fascinating that long after Delilah Townsend Cornell passed away, and far from the eyes of his family, Hamilton the Adventurer would name a daughter for his mother.

With limited details in genealogy, I think it’s sometimes easy to forget that people are complex. The details Hamilton Cornell left in officials records and in print form one composite picture, and it’s easy to overlook the details that don’t support it–details that suggest that the footloose adventurer loved and missed his mother.

Other views

I’m no expert on onomastic studies, but it is one area that I’m hoping to learn more about throughout this year. I’ll definitely write more on this topic in the future! In the mean time, here are some resources you can view!

W hat’s in a Name? via Digging for Ancestors
Ancestors in the Records: Naming Patterns via Understanding Your Ancestors
Genealogy: Look for cultural naming patterns by Barry J. Ewell via Genealogy by Barry
Comments on Naming Patterns via Bob’s Genealogy Filing Cabinet

What about you?

Ever had a breakthrough that began with clues seeded in a personal or family name? Tell me your amazing discoveries related to onomastic evidence in the comments below!

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It’s all fun and games until your genealogy research uncovers something terrible. Next week, we’ll talk about what to do when it happens to you.

Sometimes I think about how ordinary, common things tell secrets about big, invisible things. For example: I have three different unrelated “Smith” lines in my family tree.

And if I’m honest, I butt heads with my Smiths a little (a.k.a., a lot) because though I pay lip service to the idea of loving a good challenge, privately I like it to be a solvable challenge. I poke at my Smiths and feel my own intellectual laziness poking back. So many leads … If you’ve researched any Smiths — and I suspect most genealogy buffs do eventually — then you know all too well. It’s a difficult name to track.

This is hard to admit.

I felt that same intellectual laziness recently, when a friend, Bible communicator Deanna Davis, said something so profound during a recent lecture. “Can you name your biggest spiritual struggle?” she asked. “And if you can’t, how will you master it?”

The point being, there’s power in naming things.

I recognized this as important — and even told her as much later on. “I need to chew on that,” I said.

See, there’s a whole theme in my book wound up in names, particularly those of girls and women, so easily lost within a few generations. Sisters and daughters disappear into marriages; mothers’ and aunts’ maiden names fade from memory after decades of marriage. I already knew that names matter in terms of identity, but here loomed a deeper truth.

But I got lazy.

Then, last Saturday …

I was doing my normal daily Bible reading. I studied Isaiah in depth a couple years ago, and now I’m going through it again, revisiting old notes and transferring those I want to keep close to the margins of my study Bible. Prompted by the workbook for this study, I said an extra prayer first that God would show me why this text at this time.

And wouldn’t you know it, He showed up in a big way.

“I am the Lord, that is My name;
I will not give My glory to another,
Nor My praise to graven images. -Isaiah 42:8

“But now, this says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel,
‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are Mine!'” -Isaiah 43:1

“Do not fear, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
And gather you from the west.
I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
And to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring My sons from afar
And My daughters from the ends of the earth,
Everyone who is called by My name,
And whom I have created for My glory,
Whom I have formed, even whom I have made.” -Isaiah 43:5-7

“This one will say, ‘I am the Lord’s’;
And that one will call on the name of Jacob;
And another will write on his hand, ‘Belonging to the Lord,’
And will name Israel’s name with honor.” -Isaiah 44:5

These verses impressed my heart with the connections between His name, His glory, and His ownership.

Weighty Matters

Now, “glory” is a funny word, often talked about and seldom defined. The Hebrew kabowd as its used in Isaiah 42:8 means honor, and it derives from the verb kabad which means to be heavy or to make heavy. Makes sense, right? When you glorify something, you give it weight, although the idea is not that you bestow weight. Rather, you recognize it.

Here is where I think that naming is a shadow and a copy of a spiritual thing. When we discover the names of our forebears, we acknowledge their lives, their intrinsic importance. When we name our spiritual struggles, we recognize them and bring them into a position of subordination, where they can be owned and mastered. When we create things, we have the right to title and name them, because they belong to us.

All the same things happen when He names us. Our “intrinsic” importance comes from Him. We come under subordination to Him because He is sovereign. He created us and we belong to Him.

It’s a big topic. Like my Smiths — so many leads. I’m sure I’ll visit it again, yet for all there is to say about what’s in a name, nothing could be so important as Peter’s summary of the Gospel:

“… let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead–by this name this man stands here before you in good health. He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief corner stone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” -Acts 4:10-12