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Another little rabbit hole I had no idea existed until recently

My maiden name is Irish in origin and it's possible my first name is basically Irish for "Little (my Mom's middle name)". 

The above linked comment by me on Reddit is about a month old or so. After all these years, I'm still learning new things about myself and my past on topics I thought I had thoroughly covered already.

My father was very tight lipped about a lot of things while running his mouth a lot. He was career military and routinely told lots of anecdotes about his career. He was dead before it occurred to me that while he told humorous stories about his time in Vietnam, he told no stories about his service in World War II. 

He was extremely talented at saying nothing with a blizzard of words.

My dad wanted four kids. My mom told him "You'll be lucky to get two out of me." I'm their third child and a surprise package that no one thought was possible.

I'm about 4.5 years younger than my brother and 6.5 years younger than my sister. My mother had a very hard time with every pregnancy and after my brother was born, she was told she couldn't have anymore kids.

So she stopped using birth control and it was nearly four years before she was pregnant with me.

My understanding is that "fertile" is defined as getting pregnant within a year if you are sexually active and using no protection. Taking nearly four years to get pregnant is definitely an indication that something wasn't right.

I used to tease my mom that I was two weeks late because I was holding her together and it took two weeks to get my fingers loose.

I know my father named me. He named all three kids except for my mom insisting on a change to what my dad wanted to name my brother. 

Yet I was never told anything about why I was named Doreen Michele. 

I know a little something about why my siblings were given their names because my parents were very talkative in an informative, educational manner about all kinds of things they felt their kids should know about themselves and their own background and pertinent family history, but I never heard any anecdotes about why Doreen or why Michele with one L.

I can well imagine it was a stealth form of special affection that never got commented on in order to not hurt either of my siblings.

Doreen also can be translated as gift or gift from God. My dad was extremely smart and knowledgeable and played his cards close to his chest about a lot of things. I can well imagine my name roughly meant "Little Dorothea, surprise package from God" to the man who named me.

Though that's a hypothesis and both my parents are dead, so I have no means to fact check it.

My maiden name is Stanfield and it means stoney field. As noted elsewhere, my understanding is Traylor is anglicized French for a word that originally meant soldier.

In addition to the above linked post, there's another post by me about my name: It's sort of like a curse.

And yet neither of those covers any of this information.

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