Behind the Name

Do you have a favorite name you've encountered in your family research? Mine is my 1st cousin 3x removed - Zytilla Gertrude James (1853-1910). I started wondering where in the world the name Zytilla came from? It certainly hasn't popped up anywhere else in my research. 

I was surfing around and came upon Behind the Name. I really like all the information you can find on both given and surnames. When you first land on the site, you're on the given name page. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the homepage, there's an option for surnames as well. You can browse various names, search, find meanings and related/equivalent/diminutive names, see the popularity change over time in various areas of the world, and even find namesakes and various other bits of information. You can browse names not only by first letter, but by region, mythology, religion and other various categories. There are additional interactive features and message boards if you want to sign up. The site is FREE!

I had fun looking up my name. Doris, seemed to be most popular in the US in the late 1920's and early 1930's. By the time I was born, it was not just falling out of favor, it was plummeting! In fact, the only country where it currently shows any real use (albeit not much) is the Netherlands with 0.080%. I happened to be named after 3 different friends of my mother. Clearly, they were all born when the name was far more common. I was surprised to see all the usages: English, German, Swedish, Danish, Croatian, Ancient Greek, Greek Mythology. I won't bore you with the other facts about my name, but suffice it to say, I thoroughly enjoyed poking around the site as I was writing this post.

Back to Zytille Gertrude! Gertrude probably hasn't been a favorite in a long time. Between 1880-1900 it accounted for about 1% of the female names per this site. Since then, it's fallen sharply and stopped registering on their graph in the mid-1960's. But how about Zytilla? Well, there's absolutely nothing on the site. So, like all good sleuths, I Googled. Again, nothing! I opened up ChatGPT and asked AI if it knew anything, and it responded:

The name "Zytilla" is quite unique and doesn't have a widely recognized origin or meaning in common name dictionaries or linguistic sources. It may be a modern creation or a rare name that is specific to a particular family or cultural group.

So there we have it. I can fairly confidently say, Zytilla's mother probably either had 2 other names she morphed together (possibly the Polish Zyta and the German Ottilla), or she made it up and simply liked the way it sounded. It certainly was unique! I wish I knew if Zytilla (also known as Tilla in some records) liked her name? I don't much care for Gertrude, but I do actually really like Zytilla. I wonder about her character. I imagine her as a little blond girl, who looked much like Alice in Wonderland. All I know for certain are these basic facts: she was born in Ohio, died in Illinois, was married, had two children, was a housewife and could read and write. She was a "unicorn", an individual with a unique name and perhaps a unique personality to go with it.