Throughout my childhood, my sister and I had every Barbie and baby doll named with the recent popular name--our favorites included Courtney, Kristen, and Samantha (we loved calling her "Sam" for short). Most young girls already have names selected years before time for motherhood. If you ask a teacher about name selection, it is humorous how this becomes a difficult task because certain names depict certain reputations and that name will never be forgotten for numerous reasons. My college girlfriends also keep an interesting name list that makes us question what parents were thinking when naming their children. This list allowed me to share my pregnancy news with all of them when adding a new name to the list.
I value family history and wanted to start our name search from the individuals who made a difference in our own backgrounds. I actually pulled out the family tree that I created in the 5th grade and communicated with my mom and dad about these names. The name that I have always loved is the middle name of my grandfather, Theron Reece Caviness. I knew Reece could be a name for a girl or a boy, with the spellings altered according to the gender. I wanted to share stories with my child about this hardworking man who had influenced the Highfalls/Howard's Mill communities and his family through his faith and integrity. It was exciting to share the name possibility with my Papaw and he was one of the first people I told about our surprise pregnancy. My dad recently wrote about his father in a local newspaper during Father's Day that emphasizes such a great man.
You will not find my dad’s
picture on the front of Time magazine or his name listed as CEO of a Fortune
500 company, but he, like every other man, plays the hand he is dealt at birth.
If a difficult hand is dealt, the player has two choices, to give up or strive
giving maximum effort to achieve what he can become.
My dad, Theron Caviness, chose
the latter and has been able to accomplish many milestones that many have
attempted and failed. Raised in an era when times were hard and money was
scarce on a farm near Howard’s Mill in Moore County allowed him to appreciate
the good Earth.
Everything prepared on the
kitchen table came from the land, from the milk they drank, wheat for bread, to
the molasses that was used as sugar to make cakes and pies. Determination and
pure grit with faith in God were the factors that allowed individuals during
that time to survive.
From my dad’s teenage years to
the present, he has believed that God’s purpose for man on Earth was to help
his fellow man. Throughout my life, I have seen my dad lend a helping hand to
many people that were elderly, sick, or those down on their luck. This not only
included close relatives, but many families living in and out of the realms of
our neighborhood. My dad was very gifted and indeed a Renaissance man who could
do anything with his hands. This allowed him to do any task that many simply
did not have the ability or generosity to perform. Billy Graham once said that
the word love means nothing unless it is accompanied with a kind act. Everyone
that knows my dad can attest that he respects people and he shows it.
Alton, also very involved with genealogy, provided a name list as well. Alton's oldest daughter was named after his mother, Vera. This pre-teenage young lady loves carrying on the name of such a respectful woman who lived her entire life on Ocracoke Island. We walked through his family cemetery and studied the names and messages carefully. Holloway was a possible boy's name after listening to the story of how this young Confederate soldier was captured during the Civil War. He never returned to his island home dying in a New York prison. During our walk to the family cemetery, I noticed the cottage located on the family property--Emma Ballance Cottage. This was Alton's paternal grandmother who was a native of the island who had raised seven children. After talking with the oldest resident on the island, Ms. Blanche, she said that Emma Ballance was just a wonderful person, period. She was usually quiet, but valued her time with family on the island. I hope to learn more about this woman in the upcoming months because it will be interesting to notice the traits of our own daughter from her great-grandparents.
After much research and discussions, Alton and I decided that Emma Reese was the perfect name for our little girl. Even calling her both names (yes, we love the southern two name idea) had an easy flow and a reading teacher even said the vowels and syllables complimented each other-thanks Cindi! Our closest family and friends have embroidered her name on blankets, book bags, and wall decorations and I love seeing her name in print.
Emma Reese will grow up very proud of the origin of her name and hopefully find it somewhat easy to write it during the first days of kindergarten. Emma Reese will definitely provide her own meaning to this name.
