As I start to post this question, I realize I'm bumping up against the
google rules against posting personal information.  This question is
inherently related to personal information, so any advice about how to
negotiate this difficulty would be welcome.

With that preamble... I'm trying to track down the origin of my first
name (a "given name: or "Christian name"), which is unusual.  I'm
named after my grandfather, whose family was of Scottish extraction,
and who was born in Ohio in the 1880's.  Obviously there are plenty of
books of names which give the etymological derivation of given names,
and there are plenty of sources to research a family name.  But what
I'm interested to find out is any information concerning the
distribution and prevalance of given names, with the goal of finding
out where my my grandfather's name originated.  What's interesting is
not to know that it's related to the Latin word for "gold", since it's
unlikely that my grandfather's parents named him by looking at the
Latin dictionary that they had in their front room.  What's would be
interesting is:  where did it come from in his case?  Were there other
people with that name in the Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky area around that
time?  Was it an ethnic (in his case, Scotch-Irish) name?  Through the
years I've looked in libraries, and more recently on the internet, and
almost all of what's available in the geneological research category
relates to family names or word origins of given names, but not to the
geographical distribution or time distribution of given names.

Researchers: may I post my name, or can I email it to you?  (This
sounds like an overly coy approach, but perhaps google's advice
against posting personal information is sensible.)

Thanks for any help.

---

Request for Question Clarification by answerfinder-ga on 16 Jun 2003 10:38 PDT

Dear brad23ny-ga 
There is no problem with you providing your first name. Google Answers
restriction on personal details applies to researchers providing
information on details such as home address, home telephone numbers
etc.
answerfinder-ga

---

Clarification of Question by brad23ny-ga on 17 Jun 2003 15:14 PDT

OK, thanks for the clarification.  My first name is Ora.  In my case,
as in my grandfather's, it's a man's name.  Thanks for any info you
can provide.

---

Request for Question Clarification by brettquest-ga on 17 Jun 2003 21:38 PDT

Brad23ny:

Greetings, 

I am pursuing what I believe could be a plausible construction and
explanation of the historical/geographical origin of your name. Before
I go too deeply with my approach, allow me to ask you two things that
may confirm it's potential validity. To your knowledge, does your
family (on your namesake grandfather's side) originally come from
around Aberdeen, Scotland? Secondly, did the migration of your family
on that side from Scotland to the New World after 1650?

Regards,

---

Request for Question Clarification by leli-ga on 18 Jun 2003 04:53 PDT

Hello Ora

Your question interested me, as an Englishwoman living in Scotland,
because I was only vaguely aware of the name Ora, and would have
assumed it was either American or had some Jewish connection.

After looking into it, I am convinced it is more American than
anything else and have a limited amount of evidence about dates when
it was popular. I could also make suggestions for time-consuming
online searches you might do yourself which would almost certainly
help you build up a picture of where and when Ora was popular in the
US (as a man's name).

To my astonishment I found a small piece of evidence suggesting the
name was occasionally used in England, though very rarely. There is a
speculative connection with Ireland, though this would *not* be
relevant to Scotland unless your ancestors came from an area that was
both Gaelic-speaking and Roman Catholic. I didn't find anything
definite about Scotland, so would be fascinated to know what
brettquest is pursuing. I could suggest (very laborious) ways for you
to explore possible Scottish use of the name Ora.

Overall, it's clear the name has been used far, far more in the USA
than anywhere in the British Isles. If you are motivated and have time
I believe you could research this further.

By the way, I'm not surprised you're unenthusiastic about the name
derivation/etymology suggestions on the net. Some of them look pretty
unreliable to me.

Let me know if you want to hear more about my approach, remembering I
have nothing to say about the actual origin of the name before it
"took off" in the US.

Leli

---

Clarification of Question by brad23ny-ga on 18 Jun 2003 17:47 PDT

brettquest - My source of information on my family name (McCreary) is
my recollection of the McDill genealogy.  The story is that that
family or group of families was of Scotch background and came to
Virginia in about 1805.  They stayed in that area for 10 years or so,
then moved to southwestern Ohio, where my grandfather was brought up. 
I have no information as to which area of Scotland they originated
from.

leli - Yes, I would very much like to hear more about your approach. 
I just looked today and discovered on Babynamenetwork that the name is
of "Latin/Polynesian" background!  What nonsense!  In any case, the
information I have is based on personal contacts over the years, and
since my life has brought me into contact primarily with Americans, I
would not necessarily have uncovered any English or Scottish
connection based on my personal contacts.  I had a college classmate
whose middle name was Ora, after his grandfather, who was from Ohio. 
Also, my dad said that his father was *not* the only Ora he knew, so
it was apparently a name that was known in that region at that time.

---

Request for Question Clarification by brettquest-ga on 18 Jun 2003 23:07 PDT

bradny23-ga:

Greetings again. Google Answers discourages previewing answers for
pre-approval in a "if this is it I'll post it as an answer" sort of
way. So, without specifying the research I have done, and by way of
general information by all who are considering this question, I will
tell you that the theory that that I'm pursuing as a possibility is
the transposition of a family name into an unusual first name;
possibly by way of commemorating marriage with a family from which the
unusual first name is derived. The information you have provided in
your clarification does contribute by degrees to working up that
theory's plausibility by location of immagration in the New World and
by the possibility of cross-referencing the candidate family name I've
investigated with the family names you've provided. If I can document
a solid connection soonI'll post it as the answer, and await your
judgement on it. If I can't I'll post what I can in a comment and let
another researcher pick up the chase.

Please be patient. Geneology is not my strongest forte, because it can
be so speculative.

Regards,

Hello again Ora

Thanks for your message and the original question.

Though Ora may be a distinctive man's name nowadays, it was quite
familiar in nineteenth and early twentieth century America, albeit in
some areas more than others. As I've already said, gathering full
details about exactly where it was most popular will take a lot of
research. However, I am already convinced that you are right to think
Ohio was one of the states where it flourished in the nineteenth
century.

See this website listing Ora as a man's name from the "Victorian Era"
(USA):
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~poindexterfamily/OldNames.html


To track this further we can use the RootsWeb database at: 
http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi

This provides a lot of interesting information, though for accuracy I
should point out that the data is "random" material contributed by
family historians. However, there is plenty there and I believe it
will help you see how the man's name Ora belongs more to certain
states than others. I have only started the work of exploring this
site. Unfortunately you have to examine every result individually as
they do not separate male and female Oras.

This is my approach ~
 
Click on the link above.
Fill these boxes:
Given Name:   Ora
Birth Place:  Ohio
Birth Year    1870 + or -20 years
Then click on 'search'

Now we come to the laborious part. You'll see that they don't separate
male and female, so we have to extract the clearly male Oras one at a
time. Furthermore, there are many repeat entries so if they say, as
they do for Ohio, that there are 1282 entries this does not mean 1282
separate Oras born between 1850 and 1890.

Anyway, the first 120 results for Ohio 1850-1890 include 19 men named
Ora - judging by other given names and spouses' names. That implies
there may be nearly 200 male Oras born in Ohio during those decades
and recorded on that website. Obviously there will have been many more
who are not on the Rootsweb site.

For comparison, I repeated the search for Massachusetts and found 32
entries with no clearly male Oras.

Of course, some states have more entries overall than others. You
could check the relative numbers by searching on a name you believe
will not show regional variation, e.g. William.

I believe there is a lot to be discovered by running different
searches of this kind, changing the state and/or the time period, but
you will have to work at it!


=====================================

Once we get to 1900 there is a new set of information for the US as a
whole, but not broken down by state.

Information from social security card applications suggests that
between 1900 and 1909 Ora was the 378th most popular name given to
boys, with more than perhaps 240 babies per year given the name.

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/1999/top1000of00s.html

Scroll down to the links at the bottom of the page and you can click
to other decades and see how the name becomes more unusual over time.

Continuing searches on RootsWeb should give you an idea of how these
Oras were distributed across different states.

=====================================

As for the English connection ~ 

Free registration at Ancestry.com gives you a chance to search The
England and Wales Civil Registration Index 1837-1900. Searching with
Ora brings up a number of confusing records where 'ora' is probably
just part of an illegible name. But there are two entries of interest
to anyone researching the use of Ora as a man's name. There are a John
and a Charles with Ora as a middle name, from different parts of the
country.
http://www.ancestry.com/search/main.htm

If Ora did originate in England, unfortunately this still tells us
nothing about why the name was such a success in nineteenth century
Ohio!

Moving over to Ireland, there is speculation that it could have a link
with the Irish Saint Odhrán (name can also be given as Odran or Oran).
http://www.gaminggeeks.org/Resources/KateMonk/England-Firstnames/Variants/Celtic-Male.htm

I haven't found any solid evidence for this.


=====================================

Scotland ~

You can explore Scottish genealogy on the General Register Office
website after registering, which is free:
http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/

Unfortunately you have to include a surname in your search. I checked
Ora with the two surnames you gave and a few common Scottish surnames
and came up with nothing, but you might find something if you
investigated really thoroughly.

I took my information about surnames from here:
http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/grosweb/grosweb.nsf/pages/01surnames


You might also like to use this site to explore the McDill and
McCreary names. You can get a certain amount of information free and
then have to pay for more detailed records.


=====================================

As Google Answers doesn't allow for more than one researcher to answer
your question, I had to decide whether to go ahead despite
Brettquest's interesting thoughts. Checking for McDill and McCreary in
the 1891 and 1901 censuses and the current phone book suggested no
link with  Aberdeen and the North East, although I didn't do a
thorough piece of research here.
You might be interested to know that McDill seems to have a strong
association with South West Scotland.



I hope you find this interesting and helpful; I certainly enjoyed the
research. Please feel free to ask if I can clarify anything - and good
luck with examining all the genealogical records!

Regards - Leli


Search strategy:

A few searches on Ora + name, etymology, origin etc. before I went to
databases and sites I already knew.

I did try a few searches like this which showed there is a lot of
family history on the web about people named Ora:
://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Ora+born+Ohio+1879+OR+1880+OR+1881&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

That particular search mentions someone's "brother Ora" (in Ohio) on
the first page of results.

I was thrilled with the information you found.  Thanks for your
knowledge of the sources, your care and your imaginative suggestions
for further investigation.

(Ora, hope you won't mind if I use this page to send a message to
Brettquest.)

Hi Brettquest - how about joining the Researchers' Forum?

Whether you're an active or passive member, it can be very useful -
specially for communication.

Hoping to meet you soon - Leli

Ora: 

Even though I had locked your question in on repeated occasions, and
was exchanging with you to build a rapport with you as a client, I
suppose what I have been working on will now have to fall under the
heading of "for what it's worth". I apologize if you recognize that I
am not happy with my progress toward answering your question being
negated. It is not a burden for you to concern yourself with.

I was exploring the possibility of that your first name might have
been an transposed extrapolation of the Scottish surname "Oram". Oram
is the name associated with the geographic area around Aberdeen,
Scotland. There are many variations of that name (alternating the "a"
vowel with "u" or exhanging/combining a final "m" and "n") That family
name or variations of such can be found in the New World as early as
the 1650s up and down the eastern seaboard of North America,
particularly Maine down to Virginia, and into the Carolinas. The
Scottish surname McDill appears to be associated with the geographical
area around Calloway Scotland. It also has many variations. It was
documented in the New World by at least 1767, particularly to what is
now South Carolina. I can also tell you that as a first name Ora has
been used as both a masculine and feminine name, most predominantly
female. It appears to enter English usage through Latin as eithe a
derrivative of the Latin word for "prayer" or "sea coast" depending on
the descent you subscribe belief to. That is the extent of the
progressing work up I was establishing. Since you have an answer now,
I will go no further. You might consider the possibilty that somewhere
along the line an Oram female might have married into the McDill
family line, and the first name of Ora might have been bestowed and
established within that line to denote and sustain the family of the
bride.

Here are links to my sources and search strategies --

Family Crests and Coats of Arms by House of Names
http://www.houseofnames.com/?source=google&st=surname%20history

Oran Family Crest, Coat of Arms
http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp/s.Oran/oran_family_Crest/oran_coat_of_arms/qx/coatofarms_details.htm

Behind the Name: O
http://www.behindthename.com/nm/o.html

Swyrich - Database Search Results: McDill
http://www.houseofnames.com/honsearchresults.asp?sId=&Surname=McDill&searchType=both&text2.x=21&text2.y=15

Google Search: "name origin" "Ora" "Scotland" "location"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22name+origin%22+%22Ora%22+%22Scotland%22+%22location%22&btnG=Google+Search

Google Search: "first name" "Scottish" "Ora"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22first+name%22+%22Scottish%22+%22Ora%22&btnG=Google+Search

Accept this all now with my compliments.

leli - I'm thrilled with the answer.  I had no idea that this kind of
information was available.  I spend an afternoon in the NY Public
Library genealogy section a half dozen years ago, in pre-Internet
times, and found nothing like this.  I've been wondering this all my
life, and never got more than an occasional hint at an answer.  I
particularly liked looking at the Social Security records, and seeing
how the prevalance of the name dimished over time.

Brettquest - Thanks to you for your imaginative theories.  I
appreciate your work and your good ideas.

All the best to both of you.

Ora, I'm delighted that you found the answer of interest -  and many
thanks for the tip and stars.

In the 1980s I read a rather good book on names by Leslie Dunkling. I
remember he had an interest in changes in naming fashions over time
(although that particular book was about British names) and I see he
has continued to publish on the subject. Might it be worth checking to
see if your local library has anything of his? Amazon.com list his
works though there's not much in print.

Leli