Jane Godley: Dutch comfort in finding out about your boring ancestors

Published on Sunday 31 August 2008 20:07

GENEALOGY is fascinating and now also a big business, thanks to the internet. I got hooked myself and decided to find out more about my own roots. The official Scotland's People site is wonderful for accessing on the web and isn't that expensive. The downside is finding out that your grandparents, great-grandparents and their parents were rather dull, poor and most of them got married just in time to give birth!

I suppose when you start digging into the past you imagine all sorts of juicy secrets being uncovered. Were they slave traders? Opium barons? Famous explorers? No, that just happens to the folk on the telly. My mob were either Irish farmers or Dutch weavers.

The one thing I did love uncovering was the plethora of really dull, ordinary names the women had in both my husband's and my own family. The sheer number of Margarets, Nellies, Elizabeths, Marys and Janets was stunning, but slightly pepped up with the odd Marcella and a few Julias. The poor men fared no better. Was every man in the last two centuries in Scotland called John, James, William or Thomas? Somehow, the old-fashioned names sounded more solid and manly. You could rely on a big Thomas to bring home the bacon, while women called Nellie sounded quite capable of making enough soup for ten kids on a regular basis.

I don't think men in the 1800s would ever have conceived that their great-great-great-grandsons would be named P Diddy Nike McTaggart, or that the girls would get called Pocahontas Chantellene McCabe.

Family Christian names are going out of fashion. You rarely hear of a wee toddler called James any more and no-one wants to call a baby girl Jessie. Which is a shame, as I now love the sound of those old names: my own daughter is called Ashley. It's not a family name but one we got from the brand of an electrical plug that was stuck in the back kitchen of the bar we used to own.

Genealogy is a great hobby: I now know there were surnames like Gunn, Derham and Shields in my family's past. Looking at details of my great-great-great-grandmother's death, or even her marriage, makes me feel slightly more solid as a person.

I had female relatives who came to Scotland to weave; they learnt a new language, a new currency and gave birth on the floor of their workplace. They raised sons who died in wars before they got old and they settled in the East End of Glasgow, where the surviving children went to work in the big factories and foundries.

Well, at least I know they must have had a sense of humour. Who else would swap for the Dutch plains for Shettleston?

School's out for my niece…

MY great niece Abi started school this month. I can't believe my favourite wee sidekick is big enough to hold a sharp pencil!

I asked her how she was enjoying school and she explained in her wonderful, inimitable style: "It was like a big adventure at first, but then I found out I will be at school till I am an old lady at 18 years old, so I have decided to stop school and go live in a jungle for my next adventure.

"Mum says we need to think about that. What do you think, Auntie Janey? Living with monkeys and zebras or staying at school for years and years?"

Abi has a great sparkling wee imagination and I too want to pal it with monkeys and wild animals, so I told her I agreed. Her mum is not too pleased with me… yet again!

From Calton? Move to Calcutta, you'll live longer

FIRST of all it was Shettleston in Glasgow's East End that had the lowest life expectancy. Now, according to the World Health Organisation, people from the Calton area of Glasgow will die sooner than people in the some parts of India.

I was born in Shettleston and my daughter was raised in the Calton, where we stayed for 15 years. Is that haunting death-wish just following me around? We now live in the West End of Glasgow and I am fully expecting the life expectancy there to dip soon. I may just move to Delhi to get ten years on my life. www.janeygodley.co.uk