the genealogy book
, John McLennan, John McLennan, Finley John McLennan, John Duncan McLennan, etc.
[my great grandfather, Finley John McLennan, and family; including my grandfather, John Duncan, in the front; circa 1914,]
Begat, begat, begat. Akin to books of the Bible, as stretches of Old Testament lists offer names with no further details, such as the long line from Abraham to Jesus of Nazareth. Names and stories scatter, aware of who but not whom or what, seeking patterns that predate any particular moment or space of the body. London, Ontario artist Greg Curnoe (1936-1992) famously traced ten thousand years of the history of the land his house sat upon through his Deeds/Abstracts: The History of a London Lot (1995). For him to remain in that space, he needed to better understand its details. As Curnoe wrote to close his introduction to that posthumous volume: “The question of the power of histories of broad conclusions and great events in contrast to histories of details has occurred to me as I am writing this. I have felt the power of many details adding up to an understanding of the ground I am standing on. It is an understanding that is new to me, in spite of the fact that I have worked with this kind of information for years.”
On the McLennan side: John begat John begat Finley John begat John Duncan who had my father, Douglas. On my mother’s side, the Page men from Edward to Stephen to George Edward to George Edward John Kibble to George William to a septet of children, the middle of whom was my mother. While their father was George, her eldest brother, George Ralph, was known by his middle name. Ralph, who was father to my cousin, George Lawrence, known to everyone as Larry.
The line of Johns ended with the naming of my father, Douglas Ian. His was part of the first generation in how many McLennans sans John (although Ian a Scottish variant of the English name, for those nitpickers amongst you). His sole male cousin on the McLennan line, Weldon, was gifted Finley as a middle name, handed down from their grandfather. Myself, a forever name and a birth name plucked from thin air, supposedly. No connections, nor linkage. Christine, her middle name, Andrea, plucked from SCTV alumnus Andrea Martin; the first in her matrilineal line not offered a middle name from her grandmother, which we offered to Rose, instead. And then to Aoife, what would have been Rose’s. We make up for, in time.
For how long, caught in the weeds of knowing that American comedian Roy Wood Jr., who I was first introduced to through Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, has an elder half-brother named Roy Wood, both named for their father, Roy Wood Sr. (1915-1995), a well-known professor, civil rights journalist and commentator who worked in broadcasting in Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Birmingham. In a recent episode of Finding Your Roots, Roy Wood Jr. spoke of how people thought so well of his father that there’s still a barbershop that won’t let him pay for haircuts.
As part of that same episode, the look on Roy Wood Jr.’s face when he heard for the first time his paternal grandfather’s name: Roy Wood Sr.
Setting aside his elder brother, this would make him Roy Wood III. He sat, stunned. What am I supposed to do with my name now?