Diane - Fun Facts - Celebrate Your Name Week

Yesterday was 'Fun Facts' Day for 'Celebrate Your Name Week'. Here's a few things about my name.

1. According to Wikipedia, apparently my name, 'Diane', has been consistently popular for girls in the United States since the 1930's - among the top 200 names chosen. I can see it would be popular in recent years, but it was certainly popular in the 1940s where I lived in British Columbia, Canada. In my elementary classes alone, I remember a Dianne and a Diana, besides myself, plain 'Diane'. No Dinah, although historically I have seen that name as an apparent variant for Diana.

I don't see any Canadian 'name popularity' statistics, but by doing some completely unscientific searches on the British Columbia Archives Vital Events indexes, I can see that Diana is a name used here in British Columbia, Canada, from the 1880s. The earliest, I think, is Diana Augusta IRVING, birth date registered as 9 January 1884 at Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. (Both her birth registration and her baptism are indexed.) The baptism index which is not complete (and covers only 1836-1888) shows her as the only 'Diana' baptised in that time. Her mother's name is also Diana - no last name shown in the index. Her father's given names are 'Paulus Amilius'. (I will look her details up when I am next at an appropriate library, but I believe her parents married in 1883 in Victoria; her mother's surname was HAMLEY. Her father, also known as Paulus Amilius/Aemilius IRVING, was a Judge. )

Sadly, it seems Diana Augustus IRVING died 29 September 1884 but it looks as if her parents later named another daughter Diana.

There are 2 other Diana mothers named in the baptism index though - Diana Mary - married name FLETCHER and Diana - married name PIKET. In the baptism and the birth index (1872-1903), no Diane or Dianne. No one named Artemis either.

Looking at the death registration indexes (later births are not available), Diane, it seems, was a reasonably popular name in the 1930s and 1940s, Dianne less so - it seems to appear more often starting in the 1940s.

2. Now, of course, I could just as well have been 'Artemis'. Diana is the Roman version of Artemis, the Greek goddess whose temple at Ephesus (now Turkey) was one of the seven wonders of the ancient Mediterranean world. I've been there - now there's only a field in which one coloumn has been erected to show approximately where the temple stood.

Temple of Artemis, Ephesus, Sacred Destinations: www.sacred-destinations.com/turkey/ephesus-temple-of-artemis.htm

3. Historically there aren't that many famous Diana/Diane/Diannes that interested me - there was Diana (Earle) Ross of the Supremes, of course, in the 1960s. But I will let you in on a secret - I wanted to be like Diana Rigg, the actress, perhaps best known for her role as 'Emma Peel' in the The Avengers television series. Smart, independent, beautiful and tough - at least as Mrs. Peel!

Diane - Namesakes - Celebrate Your Name Week

I believe that Janet the Researcher was the first among us to notice that this week, the first week of March, has been declared 'Celebrate Your Name Week' by an amateur onomatologist named Jerry Hill.

This seems made for genealogy bloggers. Take a look at the 'Names Universe' website and pick one of the (99!) suggested 'name celebration' activities.

I'm already behind (again) because according to 'Celebrate Your Name', yesterday, March 1, was 'Namesake Day' and today, March 2, is 'Fun Facts Day' - all to do with names. I'll have to catch up today tomorrow, but for today - or yesterday, rather - here's a first post about 'Namesakes' and my name.

The name I use, Diane, wasn't given to me for anyone at all - my parents were always very clear about this.

I was supposed to be a boy. (Really! What were they thinking! They weren't even sexist, for the 40's anyway.) A baby boy name was all sorted out ahead of time. (That is the name my brother eventually received.) The first male name was for our uncle (who was named for his grandfather and his father) and the second name was for my mum's maiden name - her father's surname - which was almost my mum's nickname in the Army.

I was just 'baby girl' for a few days. They may have talked about some girl names and never decided. (Or agreed. My mum said a couple of times she'd thought of 'Sara' as my dad's mum was Sarah, but that dad thought Sara was too fancy.)

Anyway, after I was born, according to both my parents, they chose some 'D' names to match the boy's name, and 'picked my name out of a hat'. I could have been Denise or Doris, Deborah or Delilah...

One of my most exciting genealogical finds so far, maybe the most exciting one, was the realization that way back in Islay, Ontario, Canada, there had been a Diana in our family - my great great grandmother's half sister, Diana GILCHRIST (1846-1882; m. Alexander McNABB). Now my Na never knew Diana, but she did have a photograph of her. However, Na only seemed to know Diana by her married surname. She may have realized there would be a connection, but I don't believe that Na knew how closely we were related. And I'm very sure my mum didn't know - she was surprised when I was able to confirm the relationships.

However, (sadly) after my mum died, on going through some old things and then some directories, I found addresses she'd lived at in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. And, at one time, Mum lived with friends in an apartment at 'Diana Court' (583 Furby, Winnipeg). She had told me stories about what it was like there, but she never mentioned the 'Diana' part. She might have forgotten, I suppose.

But this, I think, must be why I'm Diane and not Drucilla. Maybe the name just reminded her of 'happy times'. Because I also found a list in my mum's handwriting that is obviously 3 sets of 'girl' names. And they aren't all 'D' names either, so maybe that family story about my name was mostly smoke.

No matter - I've never liked the name I got but whew... I sure didn't like any of those other names at all!