A memory flash from my childhood

[frogmarch]

When I was about five, my dad and adoptive mom adopted a baby. Dad thought it only fair that Mom name the baby because he and my birth mother had named me, and my older half-sister was named by her father and our birth mother.

Mom’s first name was Mary and her best friend’s name was Frances, and Mom asked my sister and me what we’d think of the name Mary Frances for the baby.

I remember saying, “What about Frances Mary instead?”

Mom, a staunch Presbyterian who strongly disliked Catholics, said, “Francis Mary sounds like a nun’s name! I don’t want you girls to have to say, “This is our sister Frances Mary!”

The baby was named Mary Frances.