This reminds me of a family story about my father's great-grandfather, who was an illiterate lumberjack up in Canada somewhere. His name was Philip Mercier. But he became Joseph King when he slipped across the border into the UP, and it happened thusly.

After a hard day of lumbering, the guys would sit around a fire passing a bottle of whiskey among themselves and telling stories. Grampa Philip was the prime storyteller, according to family lore.

A visitor to the camp watched the goings-on one evening and asked who the talkative Canuck was, and remarked that he was telling wonderful stories. Another lumberjack, perhaps piqued because Philip was so popular, responded, "Oh, just ignore him, he is joking."

And Philip became Joe King.

I always dismissed this story as apocryphal until a distant cousin and I started talking about family history and she sent me a genealogy which listed my father's grandmother as Genevieve King, also known as Genevieve Mercier, daughter of Joseph King, aka Philip Mercier. When I got it I asked if she had heard the story about the name change, since I hadn't mentioned it to her, and she replied that everyone in the family knew that story.

These Canadian apples don't fall too far from the tree, do they?

TEd