A few months ago, I got on a weird genealogy kick. I’ve always liked history, and I got super-obsessed with building my family tree. With all the documents that are online, you can pretty much just click your way farther and farther back in history ― I’d be doing it on my iPhone while my kid played on the playground. And one of my favorite parts of the whole thing is all the weird names I found.
I was born and raised in Oklahoma, and both sides of my family have been in the South for a long time ― primarily Texas on my dad’s side, Arkansas on my mom’s side, and Tennessee for both. I’m not a historian, so I can’t guarantee that all of these names originated in the South, but I can guarantee that somebody living in the South in the 1800s or early 1900s was walking around with it.
I could never have enough babies to use all these family names, so now I’m sharing them with you for inspiration. Please do email if you make a baby and give it one of these names!
Girls
Bell
Burtha
Clara
Dale
Dovey
Elnora
Georgia
Hazel
Hazy
Hetty
Larnie
Lillie Bell
Lorena
Louella
Minnie
Minta
Myrtle
Opal
Rowena
Winnifred
Boys
Alton
Arvol
Asa
Clarence
Clayton
Grady
Green
Elmer
Everett
Fountain
Hollis
Jasper
Lachlan
Lee
Lester
Luther
Prentice
Vernon
Virgil
Willis
