WHERE DID THOSE COME FROM

Heaven only knows how long there seemed to be few named ‘Nathaniel’. The full name. Most are Nat, Nathan, Nate.

Mine was a spelling that didn’t seem to register with past generations. Maybe I could blame it on to my father would was, like me, a lousy speller. He used ‘ae’ in place of ‘ie’.

There have been three generations in my family whose males have become Nathaniel Clarke Wallace. My dad and his dad. And me. Our son ended up in becoming Nathaniel Clarke Wallace. Making him the fourth.

I remember wondering, when he was born, what Rosanne (Degilio) Wallace and I would call our newborn son. I didn’t expect her to accept my full name. Why, I don't know. When I murmured, ‘what about the full name’, Roe shot back. “That’s a blinding flash of the obvious. We’ll call him Nathaniel Clarke Wallace the fourth.” It rendered me speechless.

I figured when he was older, he wouldn’t like the NCW moniker. I was wrong. He loved it. He’s called ‘Nat’ by some. ‘Nathan’ by those in his working environment. It seems lately everyone - friends and family - everyone - call him ‘Nathaniel’.

Author’s comment: Looking back over the generations, the Irishman who brought our family to Canada during hard times in Ireland (1840’s?) was named simply Nathaniel Wallace. God knows where ‘Clarke’ came from. The family a Wallace married into?