3 August 04
Oui, "Destry"
OK, so my name is Destry. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked what my name means or where it comes from, well…you get my drift. Usually people expect that it comes from another similarly named member of the family, or that it has a particular ethnic background. Truth be told, I never knew anything about my name, and disappointed countless numbers of people by admitting as much; everyone always expected some interesting connection or historical significance.
When the look of disappoint was replaced by puzzlement, the next question to follow was usually something like “well why did your parents name you that?” That was always a good question, and something I often wondered myself, because as a young lad my name—and therefore I—was the target of much ridicule in school. Believe me, there isn’t a variation of Destry that you could think of that I haven’t heard already. Mostly they were not so damaging, such as destroy, dust mop, destitute, industry, destronamous, dipstry, that sort of thing. I generally laughed it off (especially that last one).
I asked my mother about my name once when I was young. She told me that she had just thought of it, and liked it because it was unusual. She is kind of unusual (in a good way) so this wasn’t too surprising. Nevertheless, I was a little skeptical of this reply because even then I was aware of the two old western movies, “Destry” (with Audie Murphy) and “Destry Rides Again” (with Jimmy Stewart), and I knew she was aware of them too, yet she stuck to her guns and never admitted otherwise.
Recently, while on a visit here in Seattle, my father told me that he was the one who gave me the name. If true, I would not be too surprised by this either as he is a country boy and those damn movies would not be much of a stretch for him.
Why the two stories, the discrepancy between my parents? Who knows, they separated when I was very young and there hasn’t been much communication between them since, so it’s not too surprising they have different takes on things, as anybody would I suppose.
In any case, the truth of the matter is neither of my parents knew jack-crap about the actual name, and therefore, neither did I—until fairly recently. Not too long ago, I stumbled upon the word destrier in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary; an archaic Middle French word meaning warhorse. This lead me to do a search online, which brought me to a site called Baby Name World, and sure enough, under their French baby names section, I found Destry is a French name meaning warhorse. Curiously, it’s a girls name, but what the hell. (I wonder which of my parents would like to take credit for it now.)
After a little more searching, I made another huge discovery; there is actually a small commune (small French village) with the same name in the Lorraine regione of France, hence Destry, France. It appears that it has a thriving population of 84 inhabitants. I absolutely promise I will go to this town and take some pictures to share here in the future. Maybe I’ll even buy a Château there and run for town Mayor, but call myself Lord Wion. Hah!
When I shared this discovery with my fiance, who lives a reasonably close drive to this place (which she never heard of before), it blew her away and she considered it a sign of our future together. This was a beautiful notion, one that I shall believe is true.
So there you have it folks (I mean really, my folks), we all learned something about the name Destry, as did anyone else who cared to make it this far.
