[X] My Assistant

[dvandorn]

Bruce, I was watching a special on modern China the other day and a China specialist was pontificating on several points. His name was Bill Moomaw.

Now, you're the first person I ever ran across with that last name, so I figure it can't be all *that* common. Is this fellow some relation of yours?

-the other Doug

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Not that I know of, but we're scattered around. It took us until 1983 to answer a question as elementary as what the ethnic origin of that weird name is.

It turns out that the Moomaws were originally Huguenot French who, being Protestant, decided to leave after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and similar displays of rudeness from their Catholic neighbors and head on up to the Netherlands, which was famous as a refuge for Protestants. I presume it's there that the name picked up its current spelling, which does look Dutch -- I suspect before then it was "Mumma" (there are a few of those around too, including the first researcher to find methane in Mars' atmosphere). Anyway, a lot of them arrived in the eastern US and spread out like a plague from there. The most famous of our clan is probably the Rev. Don Moomaw, a former football player who used to be Ronald Reagan's "spiritual advisor" before he discovered, like so many holy men before him, the delights of hookers. If I had a nickel for every time I've been asked whether I know that guy...