What’s in a name? In this modern era, we’ve become accustomed to using our full legal birth names on all official documents, but going back 100 years, this wasn’t always so. Middle names were used as first names, nicknames written on official documents, variations of spellings, whether intentional accidental, and the fashionable use of just initials in front of the surname. Continuing the search for Grandma Lillian. The woman I knew as Grandma Lillian Huff falls into this catagory. Her descendants knew her as Lillian Margaret, her marriage license has simply Lilian (one l), the 1900 census lists her as Margaret and subsequent censuses, as Margaret L.. Knowing that her mother was German, I decided to look up the German variations and nicknames of given names and their English equivalents. Ludwig is Lewis, Johann is John, etc.. Well, there is no Lillian in common German name usage but there is Lili, a nickname for Elizabeth! So maybe Lilian on her marriage license wasn’t a mi
