Scotch-Irish-L Archives

Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 2001-08 > 0999128565


From: "Horatio Paul McAfee" <>
Subject: Re: [Scotch-Irish] Given Names
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 18:42:45 -0500
References: <002201c13047$d67fde40$75f12dd0@barbourville.com> <001001c13076$7c028a60$1b7f1c18@houston.rr.com> <3B8D6F72.531E89D0@xtra.co.nz>


Charles:

Thanks for your nice comments about my name, Horatio. As I was telling
someone else, other people have found it perpexing, or perhaps I should say,
unusual. Not everyone in Texas when I was growing up were classically
inclined and so I heard myself referred to as "Horatio Hornblower" more
times than I care to remember. My grandfather was Horatio Kirby, a true
Scotch Irish son of middle Tennessee. He became known as "Ratio" -- that is
Horatio without the Ho. My uncle went by "Ray." Today I love the name. I
use it very much with the Ho.


Horatio Paul McAfee
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Clark" <>
To: <>
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 5:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Scotch-Irish] Given Names


> Since when has your name been of the perplexing variety, Horatio? Apart
from the
> well-know Horatio Hornblower series of historical novels by C.S.Forester,
> there's also the Roman hero Horatius Cocles who is the subject of Thomas
> Babbington Macaulay's Horatius, which begins:
>
> Lars Porsena of Clusium
> By the Nine Gods he swore
> That the great house of Tarquin
> Should suffer wrong no more.
> By the Nine Gods he swore it,
> And named a trysting day,
> And bade his messengers ride forth,
> East and west and south and north,
> To summon his array.
>
> I learned that as a child from my grandfather, or rather from a book he
sent me
> from Aus. It's a very well-known (or was very well-known) part of English
> literature.
> I suggest, Horatio, that your name marks someone in your family down (very
> clearly) as having had Anglo-Irish aspirations if not background, from the
time
> when a knowledge of Latin was a distinguishing mark of the English gentry.
> Nothing perplexing about that at all! Though it might of course prove
> embarrassing if you wanted to deny that English influence and pretend to
be a
> Scot
> Charlie
>
>
> Horatio Paul McAfee wrote:
>
> > Hi Wayne:
> >
> > spell it. Your folks with those oddly spelled names lived during a time
when
> > Old Testament names were in vogue. And then there are some names that
> > everyone seems to find perplexing. Such as mine.
> >
> > Horatio McAfee
> >
> >
>
>

This thread: