In this post, I will share some anecdotes concerning events on and around the day of my birth. I’ve already mentioned when and where I was born, and I’ve already mentioned Hadrian’s Havenue, but there are still some stories left to be told.
Website recommendations relevant to this post include Behind the Name (a comprehensive list of baby names) and Name Voyager (a graphical tool in Java showing the popularity of names over time).
Had I been a girl, my name would have been Katherine. Apparently Mum had a vivid dream during pregnancy in which I was born female, so it was expected that I would be. The male name picked for me (just in case) was Paul, which is Dad’s middle name, but after I was born Dad decided that it just didn’t suit me. My parents then spent three days reading through the book of names; they started from the end of the alphabet, and the fact that they didn’t reach a conclusion until they got to “Adrian” is really quite amusing in context. “Paul” was given to me as a middle name.
By the time my sister was born, a year and a half later, the name Katherine was no longer under consideration because by that time a Catherine had been born among my more distant relatives. My parents consulted the name book again, this time starting from the beginning of the alphabet, and eventually deciding on “Rebecca”. My sister’s middle name is “Sylvia”, after a great aunt of Mum’s.
There’s a curious coincidence concerning birth dates. I was due precisely on my father’s father’s birthday (29th May), and Rebecca was due precisly on my father’s mother’s birthday (my grandmother was born on Christmas Day of the year that World War One ended, for which reason her middle name was Peace). I was actually born fourteen days after I was due (12th June), and Rebecca was born fifteen days after (9th January).
Mum’s pregnancy cravings were, in my case, poached eggs and tomato juice, and, in Rebecca’s case, after dinner mints.
