What's in a name?

I have always been fascinated by how people got their last names. According to the experts, many people got their names from whatever their great-great-great-great-grandfathers did for a living, such as John Taylor's ancestor may have been a tailor.

After my father's early demise in an automobile accident, my mother lived alone for eight years. She worked in a nursing home weekdays, and she worked as a cook on Saturdays at the local cattle sales auction barn.

The owner of the place was named Sam Faircloth, and he fell for my mother. He was also a rodeo performer and held records for such things as calf-roping, riding bucking horses, etc. Eventually, Sam and my mother were married.

I thought "Faircloth" was an unseemly name for a rodeo performer. He had a son and a couple of grandkids from a previous marriage, I learned, and one of the grandsons was in Paris studying fashion design. Weird, I thought, he certainly had the right name.

It was not until George W. Bush was in his second term as president, and I was watching TV, when it showed Laura Bush wearing a beautiful dress at some occasion.

She mentioned that her dress had been designed by Alexander Faircloth, as all her special dresses had been. The news commentator then revealed the extremely high cost of the gown.

How fitting, I thought, that a man named Faircloth designs and makes expensive clothes. Maybe there had been such a person in Alexander's background. Then I recalled that my mother had commented on Sam's pickiness about his clothes: they had to be the right brand, his shirts had to be starched and ironed, his boots had to be custom-made, and he would only wear one particular hat.

Hmm.

-- Louis Houston is a resident of Siloam Springs. His book "The Grape-Toned Studebaker" is available locally and from Amazon.com. Send any questions or comments to [email protected] or call 524-6926. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

Community on 05/04/2016