Name droppings

[muckefuck]

Every so often, I Google™ myself. Like masturbation, I'm sure it's something everyone tries, but most people are probably too embarrassed to talk about. (Not lhn, though!) Today's vanity search pulled up much the same hits as past searches--mostly old Usenet posts that have been archived someplace or other.

So I chopped off my given name and did a surname search. It's distinctive enough that it never pulls up that many pages. Everyone who bears it is for a close relative (i.e. first cousin once-removed or better) anyway. So I was intrigued to find someone with the given name "Tommy", since I've never met a relative named that. The cite mentioned my Dad's home town, so I wonder if this might be some obscure cousin. (We've pretty much lost touch with Dad's younger brother and his first wife, so who knows if one of them has spawned a "Tommy" or not.) Next time I talk to Dad (two weeks at most), I'll ask.

But I was absolutely floored to find a "Heinrich". In all my years, I've never, ever found my name in German context--despite its German origins. The explanation is that a ü became a i either when our ancestors migrated or shortly after. Even variants with ü (or, in Belgium, u) are thin on the ground. Breathlessly, I clicked on the link, only to find the page was in a character set my system doesn't recognise. Nuts! I paged further and found another cite, this one to a complete listing of names of characters who have appeared in Dragon magazine. Heinrich was, oddly enough, a denizen of 13th-century Novgorod.

The other shoe dropped: I searched the title of the article and, as expected, found princeofcairo's byline.

Comments

[bunj.livejournal.com]

Ironically enough, our sister's genealogical research has shown that Heinrich or Henry is a family name (used as a first or middle name by our great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather). Yet another instance of Prince of Cairo's eerie prescience.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Has Beckage given you the latest update, all about William Henry and Henry William and their bittersweet lives in this country?

Re:

[bunj.livejournal.com]

No, I'll have to give her a call (and apparently talk to our father and step mother as well, since they haven't talked to me about their visit).

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Did you even remember they were coming, Mr "Let's Game Because I Have No Plans That Weekend"? Once again, I got the dope because I called them. I was hoping to fill you in at Meinl, but time was too short and too filled with humourous talk of home improvement.