A Rose by any other . . .

I’ve been doing a little reading about surnames, what we commonly call last names or family names. From what I’ve read, we’ve only been using them on a regular basis for about 900 years. Up until then villages were small enough that people could get by with a nickname attached to their first name and everyone would know who someone was talking about: Little John, Eric the Red, Bernie the Blowhard, etc. You get the idea. When folks decided to start going with permanent last names there were some choices. People could name themselves after the work they did: the barrel maker could choose the name Cooper or the guy who ground wheat to flour could be Miller, etc. Another major choice could be a geographical feature of where someone lived, i.e. Dale, Glen, Forest, Fairbanks, etc.

There were other variables but a third major choice was to use a prominent personal physical feature: Red evolved to become Reed and other colors involving hair shade or skin tone became prominent: Brown, Black and White being the most widely chosen. Size, shape and other physical features also came in to play: Short, Pierce, Palm, Faint and Fairchild are some of the names I found easily in the telephone book.

All of this brings me to the questions I’ve been asking myself since I first saw it. As you look at the photo below what do you think was the prominent physical feature of the patriarch of this family and why on earth do the decendants feel compelled to display it on the side of a building? I also wonder why the immigrant ancestor didn’t change it when he came to America but nope, there it is.