52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 47

 Week 47:

The theme for Week 47 is “The Name’s the Same.” Chances are there are some people in your tree who have the same name as someone else. This is a good week to write about the people who carry a family name or a time when you’ve had to sort out two unrelated people who happen to have the same name. 

This has become one of my favorite stories to tell. 

Everyone who knows my family knows that my dad's name was Barry, my mom's name is Gail and my brother's name is Justin. Doesn't get more run-of-the-mill American than that, right?

Then there is me- Dominish. I was born and raised in central Pennsylvania. The first question I usually get asked when I meet someone for the first time is "How do you pronounce your name?" Question number two is "What's the story behind your name?". 

I was named after my dad's mother, Dominish Mae Casini Miller Clark. My parents had an agreement. My mom got to choose my brother’s name, and when I came along, my dad got to choose my name. 

My grandmother, Dominish, went by the name Donna for her entire adult life. Our theory is that she preferred the Americanized nickname. Her own parents went by nicknames- Giuseppe went by Joe and Apollonia went by Alice. 

When it came time to name me, my mom thought my dad was going to name me Donna... that's when he explained that Donna was a nickname and that his mother's name was Dominish. 

I attended an Italian language meetup in Lititz a few years ago and someone questioned the origin of my name. They explained that the name Dominish doesn't really exist in the Italian language... Domenica* does, but Dominish is a bastardized version of it. 

*Domenica / Dominica= Sunday, the Lord's Day 

As the family historian I immediately started digging. Turns out that my grandmother was born Dominica Mae Cacinni in 1922. Dominica is listed on her birth certificate as her legal name. By the 1930 census, her name is listed as Dominish and again on the 1940 census. At the age of eighteen, her marriage license has her name listed as Dominish. Her obituary lists her name as Donna and her headstone in the cemetery reads Dominish. 

When it came time to name me in 1994, a full eighteen years after my grandmother had passed, no one in the family realized that her name wasn't actually Dominish. My great-aunts Claire, Flo, Angline, and Dora, Dominish's sisters, were still living but never spoke up to correct my parents (which is a family mystery in and of itself). My aunts and uncles, Dominish's children, and my dad's siblings didn't know that her given name wasn't Dominish. 

So here I am with an incredibly unique name by central Pennsylvania standards and by native Italian standards. 

For better or for worse, I guarantee that I'm the only Dominish you'll ever meet. If you met another one, send her my way. 
















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