Today’s prompt: Do you share a first name with one of your
female ancestors? Perhaps you were named for your great-grandmother, or your
name follows a particular naming pattern. If not, then list the most unique or
unusual female first name you’ve come across in your family tree.
Probably the most common name among my female ancestors
is Mary: 241 of them. My own name is unique in my database. While not very common in any time period, “Wendy”
is not unusual. Probably the most
unusual female name among my ancestors is that of my great-grandfather’s sister: Zibiah Saloma Davis Marshall (1864-1936).
Biblical associations with these names make them an odd
pairing. "Zibiah" means Doe, Gazelle, Beautiful Lady. Zibiah was briefly mentioned in 2
Kings 12:1. This mother of King Jehoash
is listed among the women who showed courage, but I’m not exactly sure what she
did. Maybe she helped hide and protect
her son who was one of the targets of his power-hungry and murderous
grandmother.
Saloma, on the other hand, is a familiar biblical name. While her name means “Peace” (related to the
word “Shalom”), she will forever be remembered as the dancing woman who
demanded John the Baptist’s head on a platter and got it.
Courage. Beautiful. Peace.
Murder. I wonder if Zibiah Saloma’s
mother had been experiencing strange food cravings.
©
2014, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
Haha! Sounds like a good guess. ;)
ReplyDeleteI hope you're having a wonderful Sunday.
Mary is a lovely name; both my mother-in-law and my own mother were called Mary, and it was passed on to two of my MIL's granddaughters as a middle name. My own name is a derivative of the stem.
ReplyDeleteYou might be on to something there, Wendy. That certainly is an unusual pairing of rare names. To double check that, I just took a look on my latest favorite name database and neither name comes up on the top thousand names for girls in any year from 1880 to the present. Whatever Zibiah's mom was thinking, she certainly knew her Bible!
ReplyDelete