First-Person+Inquiry+Application-SNS

Stephanie Snead ECI 430/FL-12

First-Person Inquiry Application-SNS

A) My full name is Stephanie Nicole Snead. So let’s start with Stephanie. My mother is deceased, so the only source I was able to use was my father. After tracking him down, I discovered that my mother was six months pregnant and about to approach 7 months, and at the time she had not yet picked a name for me. For one she did not know what the sex of the baby was, nor did she know if she would carry the pregnancy to full term, being that she had had previous miscarriages. So my mother waited to the last trimester of her pregnancy to determine what she was going to name me.

One Sunday evening, my mother and my father went to visit some of my family in Meadow, NC. While down in the country my aunt Alberta Peacock, who was in her late 70’s, told my mother and father that she had a strong feeling that the baby inside my mother’s belly was a girl, and that they should name her Stephanie. My father told me that the both of them agreed that night that my name would be Stephanie, but they still didn’t know what to give me as a middle name. My mother maiden name was Cole, so she wanted me to have Cole in my name so she discovered the name Nicole and decided to make that my middle name. For my last name I don’t have any exact facts of how my family got the last name Snead, but I will take an educated guess. I think that my last name Snead came from the master’s last name on the plantation my ancestors were sold to.

That was pretty much the historical background of my name, now after doing a little research online I have found that my first name Stephanie means “Crown.” My name derived from the origin masculine name Stephen, and is French according to []. I also googled the origin of the name Stephanie, and a Wikipedia page popped up and it said that my name comes from the Greek name (Stephanos) meaning crown. Here is the link: []. For my middle name, I found that Nicole is a surname that is also Greek and means “victorious people,” according to Wikipedia. I don’t know how true that is, but I guess it will do for now.

B) For the name activity in an English/Language Arts class, I could have the students write a Thank You letter to their parents for giving them their name. Also in the letter the students' can include some extra facts that they found out about their name and can share those facts with their parents. This activity will be great for students because they will have hands on experience with learning how to research and also practice their writing. If I did this activity with my class, I will probably make this the first writing assignment to kick off their English writing journey in my class.