OMNASTICS

I was talking to a woman and she said she wanted to meet her brother;  he was getting out of a car.  I called him by name and said that I'd met him at my husband's high school reunions.  She said, "You have a really good memory."  I answered, "He has an unusual name I'm not apt to forget;  in fact, was he named for a character in Thomas Hardy's The Return Of The Native?"   She said, "No, he was named for my father."  I said, "Oh, then he's a Junior?"  She said, "No, thank goodness;  I hate the term junior."  She said that her dislike of "junior" was the reason she named her son "the second."  

I said, "So he's named after his paternal grandfather or paternal uncle."  She looked at me with bewilderment and said, "No, he's named after his father."  I said, "But it's only correct to name a boy the second if he's named after his paternal grandfather or uncle;  if he's named for his father then it's junior."  She said, "I've never heard that."

I said, "The best example is with Bobby Kennedy's sons;  one son is Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr.,  and another son is one is Joseph Patrick Kennedy II because he's named for his grandfather and uncle."

I could tell that she didn't appreciate the information.  When I told Les about it, he said, "Didn't you learn about foot- in- mouth disease when you corrected someone in Gerald's family?" (see my BLOG article THE SECOND)

I have noticed the practice of naming boys "the second" is quite prevalent in Fayette County. 

See an article from Genealogy here.