Day 9 – My Name & Its Origin

Larada Horner-Miller

4 months ago

My name, Larada, comes from my maternal grandmother and goes back five generations. Here’s where it came from!

My Grandmother

My namesake, Larada Pearle Hinton Horner, never went by Larada but by Pearle. She did let me know at one point in her life, she went by Laura which haunted me on an RV trip. On May 30, 2005 this poem came as a result of her sharing that little tidbit, but she had been dead for nearly thirty years. This incident happened at a rest stop somewhere in Wyoming. (See poetry shows up in the strangest places in my life!)

Laura

I held the door open

            For her –

            Crippled leg that moved

                        Detached

            A cane –

                        Obviously, a problem

                        For this silver haired citizen.

She said, "Thank You, Laura”"

            With familiarity.

The name my grandmother used

            Instead of Larada.

I use Larada.

I stopped

            Held my breathe!

Laura – thank you, Laura!

She knew me

            Knew my grandmother!

But how?

Was that door a step

            Into another world –

A world shared by seeking souls?

I opened a door

            Stepped into a space

            Between this life & the next

A spiritual zone

            A place God wanted me to

            Connect to my past

            In a way completely foreign to me.

Was this the crystal

            My Mayan friend told me

                        To look for 15 years ago?

Had it been here all along

And I was too busy to hear it?

Spirit world,

            I'm open to you

                        And the message

            The message I need to hear

            The message that will change my life!

(This poem will be included in book #3 of my five-book poetry series, Navigating Life’s Journey Through Poetry, next year!)

My Great Grandmother

Larada Florentine Best McDonald, my grandmother’s grandmother donned our name, but I have no idea where it came from. Legend had it that name went back seven generations, but I just looked through ancestry.com and my genealogy information in Family Tree Maker and no one past this Larada is named. So, I guess that’s a legend. So, did it started with her? What’s its origin?

My Name

I have always loved my name and the commotion it causes. When I was a child at Vacation Bible School in our little country town, the teachers came in from other places. At Awards Night, the leader stood up and announced an award for Orlando Horner. We all looked around, confused and by process of elimination, I knew it was me!

Later in life when I introduced myself, I’ve had numerous people sing to me, “As I walk down the streets of Laredo. . .” That gave me the idea of an easy way to remember my name—think of Laredo, Texas and pronounce it that way but put an A on the end. Obviously, that’s not the correct spelling of my name, but it has helped many people remember how to pronounce it.

One year at a teacher’s workshop, we had to do a drawing of our names. I drew “La” like a musical note, “Ra” like a ray of sun and “Da” as duh! That helped everyone there remember my name.

Finally,

The picture of my great grandmother’s gravestone came to me today as a hint from ancestry.com, so I wanted to share it and the story behind my name! What’s the story behind your name?