Texas. He received a record for an Eldridge Davidson McCauley, born to parents Robert Davidson McCauley and Stella Lucille McCauley. “It was my father. My father was unaware of this, because he had never seen his birth certificate. … Neither he or his older brother Robert … knew that he had a different name at birth. My father had always been known by James L.” The elder James was simply stunned. He “didn’t believe me at first. He lives in Honolulu, so when I told him over the phone, he thought I was joking. When I told him I had the birth certificate from the state of Texas, he asked me to send it to him.”
Today, James Jr.’s theory is that Eldridge Davidson took the name James Louis at age three months, when he was baptized. “When you are baptized a Catholic, it is not uncommon for the child to take some part of the godfa- ther’s name. My father’s godfather was his mother’s broth- er, Louis Garcia. Also, on my grandfather’s side, there are many James McCauleys further back in time. So I think by the time the baptism came, they compromised and chose the name James Louis McCauley.”
Meanwhile, James suspects that Eldridge Davidson had been a further nod to the paternal side of the family. There was precedent in the McCauley family of using the moth- er’s maiden name as a middle name, which is where James Jr.’s grandfather (Robert Davidson McCauley) got his own middle name. The family also sometimes passed on broth- ers’ names to sons, and Robert Davidson McCauley had a brother named James Lexie McCauley—James L. “That’s why I also think my father’s name was a good final com- promise. Since James L. was like James Lexie, and Louis fit with my uncle Louis Garcia (James Louis). But that is just my deduction from what I know about each side of the family. No one knows for sure.”
Confused? So are we. And so are the host of family his- torians out there looking for ancestors with names that aren’t what they’ve always believed them to be. But wher- ever a name comes from, eventually, as it did for Bridget Walsh/Delia Welch, a name becomes an identity—whether the name change happened centuries ago or just a few years back.
Philip Crawford tells a story about his cousin Earl, who has always gone by Shorty Bastin. “One day someone called his home asking for Earl Bastin. His teenage daugh- ter said, ‘Nobody here by that name’ and hung up. Her mother asked what the caller wanted, and then said, “‘Why did you tell them that?’
“‘There’s nobody here named Earl.’
That’s right: Shorty’s own daughter had never heard her father’s name.
After you live with a name long enough, you are who you are, regardless of what a piece of paper might say or what a parent might have wanted.
So are the
out there looking for
that aren’t what they’ve always
believed them to be.
Shanna Jones’s Great-aunt Lois Ann felt that sentiment when Shanna’s research uncovered christening records that revealed Lois Ann’s name to be Anna Louise. “She said she was too old to change it now!”
Lezley K. Barth’s grandmother, Freda May Westfall Newitt, had been Freda all her life to family, to friends, and on legal documents—at least until it came time to apply for Social Security benefits. The state of Indiana had no record for a Freda May Westfall, though they had a Fredaricka.
“You could hear her reaction to the discovery and this name all the way to our house. She could not imagine why no one in her family had bothered to share this vital infor- mation with her; after all, it was HER name. It’s a wonder the then-deceased family members didn’t hear her on ‘the other side.’
“My grandmother passed away in 1967. Both her death certificate and gravestone bear the name ‘Freda’—as she would have wished.”
Paul Rawlins is a writer and editor who is still coming to terms with having been given no middle name at all.
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