At My Soiree: Tabitha

My middle name is Dorcas, and that has never been easy!

I always was extremely reluctant to tell people my middle name, mostly because it sounded like "dork" and also because no one had ever heard of it. I used to say that people would laugh if I told them, and of course they swore that they would not. You know what happened next! I would reveal my middle name, and everyone would burst out laughing.

The name is biblical: Dorcas is a Greek name (Tabitha in Aramaic ). She was

a disciple of Joppa found in the Book of Acts 9:36–42 of the Bible. She was a dressmaker, who made clothes for the poor in her village. Acts recounts that when she died, the people of the village called upon Saint Peter who came to where she was being waked and raised her from the dead. (quote from wikipedia).

(Saint Dorcas is on the right in the picture, above.)

There have always been Dorcas Societies doing charitable works. There was also a Dorcas brand of dressmaker's supplies. Still no amount of having folks do good works in the name of Dorcas, or boxes upon boxes of dressmaker's pins could compensate for having a name that made everyone think of the word "dork"!

But one lives with it. And one goes simply with the initial "D."

Then just last year, I looked up Dorcas in Wikipedia and nearly fell over where I stood.

Dorcas is commemorated as a saint in the Lutheran church. Cool. I was raised in the Lutheran church. The Wikipedia entry gives the dates for celebration of her in different Lutheran synods:

She is commemorated with Lydia of Thyatira and Phoebe on January 27 in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and on October 25 in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.

Now that is really cool. My birthday is today, January 27th.

The last sentence of the entry, however, blew me away totally! My mother's name is Dorcas; I was named after her. My mother's birthday is October 25th. She is Lutheran. (The Roman Catholic church celebrates St. Tabitha's day on October 25.)

And it wasn't planned. My great-grandmother, who was definitely not Lutheran, was named Dorcas. We carry on her name.

Somehow, I am less reluctant to tell people my middle name now. I can take their incredulity - "Your name is WHAT?" - and suggest that they look the name up in Wikipedia: A saint who was raised from the dead, whose name I share, who is commemorated on my birthday.