What’s in a Name?
In the play, Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare has Juliet say, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Of course, life is a bit more complicated than that. The truth is, our names are tied to our identities. In fact, “A name is your identity. It’s what people call you, it’s what you respond to, it’s what you understand about yourself (Scanlon).” So what happens if you dislike your name and feel that it does not reflect the “real you”? Unfortunately, this can cause problems in life. “They tend to not be as well adjusted (Hedrick).” In the article, 7 Things You Can Do if You Hate Your Name we are reminded that “Our parents choose a name without knowing the person we’ll turn into (Alison.)” If you decide that your name does not reflect your identity you may want to: “consider why you hate it; shorten it; use your middle name or nickname; go for a variation; look for an inspirational namesake; change the spelling; or choose a new name (Alison).“
My paternal grandmother did not seem to be enamored with her name at least as she got older. As she made some monumental changes in her life, she decided to change her name. Her parents named her Fannie (or Fanny) Vandyke. She was born in Strickler, Arkansas on May 8, 1910 to Marshall Vandyke and Elvira Estep. Marshall had been a Union soldier with the 57th Regiment in the Indiana Infantry during the American Civil War. He enlisted on October 21, 1861 and was discharged on November 23, 1864 because he was “wounded June 23, 1864 at the Battle of Kennesaw Mt., Georgia. His right eye was shot out.”
Marshall was 33 years older than Elvira. (He had been married before to Eliza Carilton and they had four children.) Marshall and Elvira were married in 1896 in Arkansas; Fannie was the fifth of their six children. Marshall died in 1922. Both he and Fannie’s brother Elliott Cecil were buried in the Bugscuffle cemetery, four miles from Strickler.
Sometime after Marshall died, Elvira married Robert A. Turner and the family moved to Hoffman, Oklahoma. It was here that Fannie met and married my grandfather, Donald Watkins. According to their marriage license, Fannie claimed to be 18. She was actually 15, about a month before her 16th birthday.
My dad, Billy Dean Watkins, was born April 1, 1930 to Fannie and Donald.
Shortly after my dad was born, Fannie made a momentous decision to leave her baby, her toddler, and her husband to follow her family to California and shortly thereafter began to call herself Delores Frances instead of Fannie. Anyone looking for Fannie Vandyke Watkins after my dad’s birth and the 1930 census will not find any record of her except for her mother’s obituary in 1936 where my grandmother is listed as “Fanny Watson”.
As I wrote in my blog post of January 22, 2021, ” Oklahoma was a challenging place to live in 1930. The stock market crashed in 1929 and Oklahoma was in the throes of the Great Depression made worse by falling oil prices (Donald was a laborer in the oil fields in 1930). In addition, Oklahoma was in a long-term drought leading later to the Dust Bowl. Unemployment was high and survival was difficult. Many people headed to California where they thought jobs were plentiful and life would be better (often found not to be true). Fanny’s mother, Elvira, had remarried after the death of her husband, Marshall Vandyke. In 1930, Elvira and her husband Robert Turner, along with her son Arthur Raymond (Ray), moved west to Turlock, California. In addition, another brother of Fanny’s, Claud, also moved to Turlock in 1930 after he left Panama where he was a soldier stationed at Fort Davis.”
After Delores Frances moved west, she met Elmer Clare Russell and they had a daughter, Wanda Louise, born in 1934 in Arizona. Delores and Elmer married on March 20, 1948. The application for the wedding license shows that Delores “Fannie” and Donald were divorced in 1932.
Recently, I discovered that Fannie/Delores applied for a Delayed Birth Certificate under the name Delores Frances Vandyke and witnessed by her sister, Virginia. Delores applied for this birth certificate in 1952. Since the Vandyke family lived in rural Arkansas, it is most likely that Elvira gave birth at home and no birth certificates were issued. (I also found Delayed Birth Certificates for one of Fannie’s sisters and one of her brothers.)
I met my grandmother, step-grandfather, half-aunt, and cousin once when they came to visit us. My mother corresponded some throughout the years with my dad’s mother.
“Sometimes we try to live up to our names. Sometimes we try to run away from them. But either way – and for all the options in between – your name is a crucial factor in developing your sense of self, and thus helps propel you forward on various paths of life and career. (Hedrick)”
Sources
Alison. “7 Things You Can Do If You Hate Your Name …” All Women’s Talk, https://lifestyle.allwomenstalk.com/things-you-can-do-if-you-hate-your-name/.
Hedrick, Michael. “How Our Names Shape Our Identity.” The Week, The Week, 8 Jan. 2015, https://theweek.com/articles/460056/how-names-shape-identity.
Scanlon, Kyla. “A Rose by Any Other Name: The Importance of Our Names in Shaping Identity.” Medium, The Startup, 21 Jan. 2020, https://medium.com/swlh/a-rose-by-any-other-name-the-importance-of-our-names-in-shaping-identity-3fed42b116b1.
A rather sad story of identity for the children Delores, nee. Fannie, left behind. I hope your grandfather was able to pick up and move on and make a good home for your dad. Thanks for sharing.
Fortunately my grandfather’s parents and siblings lived nearby. My dad credits his aunt as having raised him and named me after her. As I’ve done research, I’ve discovered she was just 11 years older than my dad. I wish that my dad had talked more about his childhood. My grandfather remarried when my dad was 9 or 10 and they remained married until my grandfather died in 1981.