Why I have Such A Name

As Span has pointed out, my name is not Michael Arthur Edwards or even Sebastian St John Nigel Edwards, it's Alcuin Insull Edwards, so why do I get such a name?

I'll start with Insull because it's a longer story. My grandfather's name was Clarence Insull Edwards. He was born not a throwin away from Villa Park back in the 1880s when Villa used to win things all the time instead of the occasional League Cup win and the League once every ten years (we're overdue by the way).

I have no idea why he was called Clarence but he got the middle name Insull because of a family tradition of giving the oldest son (until the early 19th century it was all children) his mother's maiden name as a middle name. (His mother was Sarah Insull - Sarah also had a much older brother who was the father of Samuel Insull who emigrated to the USA before my grandfather was born, became secretary to Thomas Alva Edison and at one stage almost literally OWNED Chicago.


When my father was born, for reasons known only to himself, decided to call my father Anthony Clarence Edwards, rather than giving him Porter as his middle name as he would under the tradition. My father knew there was a family tradition but he didn't realise precisely WHAT that tradition was so he gave ME the middle name Insull thinking he was following the tradition. Of course, if he HAD been following the tradition, my middle name would have been Lockwood, but there you go.

I have not continued this family tradition for two reasons... firstly my wife had her tubes tied before I met her and so we have no kids. Secondly... my wife's maiden name is Coote (although when I met her she was living under her married name of Blair ... no relation to Lionel, Tony or even Sander from The Armageddon Rag).

So... that's Insull so why am I called Alcuin. That is a much shorter story. I was born in 1960 at the very beginning of Generation X. This in turn means that my dad was an early breaker of the Boomers' mystical hippy wave (actually it was a separate tradition, that runs in the family, my Grandmother on his side was a devotee of the odious Madame Blavatsky)



Anyway my father was a member of AMORC



(The Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis) otherwise known as Rosicrucians. Rosicrucianism claims origins with the Comte de St Germain in the 18th century, with the Illuminati in the 17th and even with ancient Egypt or Atlantis but AMORC was founded in 1915 and publishes (or used to publish back in the fifties and sixties) a magazine called Rosicrucian Digest. In the February 1960 edition, there was an article on Alcuin.



So... I have my name because my Dad messed up a family tradition and because there was an article in some mystical magazine about an 8th century Northumbrian Beatus (who is unusual in STILL not being canonised 1201 years after his death)