Names. Names are all-important in doing genealogy. Where did our ancestors get their names……… or our names?  Surnames just came with birth in most cases but many times were changed somewhere along the way to adulthood and for a hundred reasons.

What about first names? Our ancestors didn’t have the “search for baby names” on the Internet or even baby-names books (pre-dating the Internet, right?). They had the Bible. That’s why so many of our ancestors have biblical names.

My lineage includes a distant uncle named Deloss Carr, 1876-1954, born and died in the midwest. Always thought that was an odd name and was fairly certain it was not a Bible name. Then, WOW. Doing some SCRIBE indexing, I came upon a Deloss Clement, born in 1907, enumerated in the Yakima county school census.

So I asked Grandma Google for the meaning or origin of that name and by golly, I stumped her. She had no clue except to state that it was a male name.

Anybody else have a Deloss in their family??? Any clue as to its origin?