The Name Game

So last night, Aaron and I were discussing names. I was wondering where the name Swan comes from. We called Aaron's mom and she told us that Aaron's great great great (I think that's how many there were) grandpa's last name was Neilson, and when he enlisted in the Swedish Army there were too many Neilsons, so they added endings to the names, and his name became Neilson-Schwan. After his service in the army they could choose to drop the extra name off the end or keep it. He chose to keep it, and then eventually dropped the Neilson. Then when his family moved to the United States they changed it to Swan.

Then we asked about Aaron's name. Aaron has a twin brother whose name is Kelly Richard Swan. Kelly is a family name, and Richard is Aaron's uncle's name, so we were wondering (since we know where Kelly's name came from) where Aaron's name came from. Turns out that Aaron Michael is a name that Aaron's dad picked out for him. It may or may not have scriptural connections.

After that we were wondering about my name. My maiden name is Krystal Lynn Lemmon. Krystal is a German name that my dad heard on his mission (to Germany)that's why my name is spelled with a "K" and not a "C" because that's how the Germans do it. My middle name Lynn is after my mom whose full first name is Tamilynn.

We called my mom to ask about Lemmon. She didn't know. (Probably because our family tree is a little bit like Jacob 5 with a lot of grafting in and a lot of burning the cut off branches. My Grandma Lemmon was married 4 times. In her third marriage to Grover Thompson, my dad was born. When my dad was two his biological father left him and my grandma in Hawaii. When my dad was 12 my grandma remarried a guy named Earl Lemmon, who adopted my dad as his own.) My mom said sadly that she knew more about my dad's biological father's genealogy than she did about the Lemmon side. She said that on my dad's biological side his great great great great grandmother was Abigail Laodecia Stewart of the house of Stewart in Scotland (she wasn't exactly sure it was Scotland). Abigail married Nathan Tanner Senior, who was the father of N. Elden Tanner, who was an apostle. On the Lemmon side, my mom said that she knew we were descendants from Orson Pratt who was the brother of Parley P. Pratt. Both prominent church history figures. She wasn't sure exactly how we were related to them though.

While we are on the topic, I thought I tell why we chose to name Lincoln what we did. Lincoln's full name is Lincoln Aaron Swan. We chose Lincoln after President Lincoln, and also because it means "the gatherer" which we thought could have cool missionary context someday. His middle name Aaron, is after his dad and after Aaron in the Bible.

We've kind of decided that we want to give each of our kids a first name that has meaning or is after someone who did something good. We want their middle names to be family names. What about you? Where does your name come from? Why did you decide to name your kids what you did?