Name Story

Hieu: Can you tell me once more time your full name, because I am confused between Brinton and Lykes?

Brinton:  Yeah! Right, right, right right..um…my full name…is Margaret Brinton Jonerbark Lykes. Now, where did I get all these names from.  Those names came from different points.  Lykes is my family name of my father family.  Um.. Brinton is the name that my mother chose with my father to give me as a first name.  But historically in my family back round, it actually it is a last name. It was the last name and my father was one of eight children, there were seven boys and one girl, and that girl who was the oldest member of my grandfather family.  Umm.. did I say my father was one ……my grandfather was one of eight children, my grandfather, my father’s father, not my father. 

Hieu:  Father’s father, so your father has……

Brinton:  My father just was one of the three, but his father, my grandfather was one of eight, seven boys and one girl.  And that girl married into a family and her son’s name Wilson Brinton Terman.  And my father, that was his cousin, and he was …he worked with his cousin, and he’s very fond of him, and that name was my god father.

Hieu:  I see.

Brinton:  And they gave me that name.  And then they went to baptize me at the church, the priest said Brinton was not a Christine name,  and if you’re going to baptize a Catholic, you needed a Christine name.  So Margaret was the name of my father’s mother , my grand mother, and they gave me that but I never used it.  But ….And then I was confirmed as a child, that you had to pick a saint name …that …for the conformation and Jonerbark …was a saint that my mother picked for me.

Hieu:  Wow, you have a full history of  name.

Brinton:  A full history of names but all my life I….I was Brinton Lykes,   and when I started publishing, as an adult, I was very close to my grand mother who lived not far …she  lived in New Jersey …that period of my life…….and so I put and M in front of it, (sum)…of….acknowledgement of her.  But I didn’t write the Magaret out because I knew that then everybody would start knowing me as Magaret.  And by then I have quite of mine….

Hieu:  So you prefer called Brinton or Dr. Lykes.

Brinton:  Right.  There you go.

Hieu:  I got it now.  It was similar to my case.  My last name is Pham, middle is Thi and first name with two letters Ngoc Hieu, but they switched it around and called me Ngoc.  It was wrong. When I got my American citizen, I dropped every thing and only keep my last name Pham and first name – Hieu. Just make it simple. 

Brinton:  Ah, yes! It was a similar story.

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