My great-grandmother’s name at birth was Louisianna Talitha Cumi Cotton. She was one of several Louisian(n)a’s, but the Talitha Cumi was unique and supposedly had to do with her almost dying on the first day of her very very long life (it’s from the Bible and means “Little girl, rise” in Aramaic- Jesus says it to the daughter of Jairus when he raises her from the dead)
The name Judieth is probably a corruption of a surname. Some of my ancestors who came from Switzerland to South Carolina ca. 1735 had the surname von Tschudit and their descendants changed it to, among other spellings, Judy and Choody [dropping the t at the end and dropping the von altogether). It continued to appear in the family as a given name, however, with at least one man having the given name Judy and another the given name Choodith, so I’m guessing that Judieth is yet another variation. Tresvant is also a surname that was in the family in the 18th century.
Two of my brothers have the middle names ‘Ambrose’ and ‘Zeno’. The one called Zeno was acutely embarassed by it until he was an adult, while I always envied him. Mine is Frederick.
We only have sensible names in our family. That’ll be where Cianfa and Elyssia came from. Yes, they’re both mine. And our family? Get your teeth around “Guimaraens”.
I can’t claim any unusual names in my immediate family. I know that, going further back, there are some distant male relatives named things like Cornelius.
A great uncle named Columbus (he died in 1910 - alas, I never knew him)
Great, great aunt named Dallie (she died in the 1970s at about a million years old)
Great, great aunt named Inez
Great, great aunt named Matt
Great aunt named Beulah who killed herself by drinking Lysol. Drama queen.
Gritine Margarit (sp?) Henriette is my mom’s name. But to be fair, she’s Dutch. Her sibs all have three long names like that, too. One of my cousins is Lonako, after the mountain my aunt and uncle saw out there back door when they were working in Cameroon. Lon is also a Dutch name.
