My name is Ronald Paul Alder and I would like to tell you about how I got this name. The simple answer is, my parents gave me that name, but there is more to it than that.
Let's start with my surname Alder. As expected, I got this name from my father, Rulon Jensen Alder, who got it from his father following the usual hereditary surname convention. The name Alder comes from England. My great-great-grandfather Alfred Alder was born in England in 1824. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1841 and immigrated to the United States in 1844. You can learn more about his life here. The Alder family coat of arms is shown above. I know little about it, but it is interesting to me that the Alder family has one. More about Alder later.
Middle Name: Paul
My middle name Paul is interesting, so let's talk it. This comes from my granddad's name Melvin Paull Alder. Most people called him Paull except for my grandmother who called him by his first name Melvin. I have always liked this tie to my granddad. The reasoning behind my middle name seems to be simple, but there is a bit more to the story. Why is my middle name spelled with one ell and not two like my granddad's name?
To start answering that question I'll first explain why my grandfather's middle name is Paull. His mother's maiden name is Alice Ellen Paull which is where granddad's middle name comes from. Since Paull is a last name, it is reasonable that it is spelled with two ells. So why is my name spell with one ell? My mother explains the missing "l" this way. She wanted me to go by the name Paul to be like my granddad. My parents named me Ronald Paul Alder and intended to call me Paul. My mother thought that Paull with two ells would cause problems for me. She did not want me to always be explaining that my name has two ells. So my name has one ell.
As it turns out, I have never been called Paul, with one ell or with two ells. There was a little twist in my parents' plan. My cousin, who is very close to my age, is named Ernest Paull Felix. His mother Mae named him after our granddad and planned to call him by his middle name. Just like my mother planned to do with me. My mother didn't want my name to be confused with my cousin. So early in my life, she abandoned her plan of calling me Paul. My aunt Mae also changed her plan. Ernest Paull Felix was never called Paull. So the plans of both mothers got disturbed by each other.
My mother was fine about how things turned out. She has no regrets about calling me Ronald. She does regret a little, that my middle name is spelled with only one ell. She thinks that two ells would connect better to the family heritage of Paull being a last name. Another twist is, whenever I write my full name or sign my name, I use Ronald P Alder. So I have, with no forethought, abbreviated Paull to P.
First Name: Ron
My mother, for the most part, called me Ronald, that is unless she was mad at me, then it was Ronald Paul. If Paul was added when she spoke my name, I knew it was time to do what she wanted even if I didn't want to. When I was little, I was called Ronnie by some people. My aunt Fae Ross started calling me Ronnie then. She called me Ronnie her whole life. As I got older, around junior high age, I started having people call me Ron. Mom was okay with that, but she still called me Ronald for a long time. After I was married and everybody called me Ron, I tried to get my aunt Fae to call me Ron. She replied, well, oh, "I call you Ronnie" and that is what she did. Coming from her, it wasn't demeaning, but loving, so I stopped trying to correct her.
When I was born, Ronald was a common name. I worked for a small company where everyone knew everyone. At one point, there were seven people working there with the name Ron. To avoid confusing us, some people stated calling me Alder. I had no problem with that, in fact, I liked it.
After many years, the name Ronald has fallen out of favor. Over the years, my son and I would play a little game after watching a movie. We would count the number of people in the credits of the movie with the name Ron or Ronald. Ron Howard is a good example of a person that has been in show business for a long time and would show up in credits. He was born the same year I was. Over the years, the credits have had fewer and fewer people named Ron.
Last Name: Alder
let's get back to my last name Alder. Alder is an english word. It is a type of tree in the birch family. Alder is not a very common name. In Utah, most of the people I have talked to with the last name of Alder are related to me through Alfred Alder, who moved to Utah in 1853.
My wife's maiden name is Tracy Lundquist.
When we got married, she thought that Alder would be
a simpler name and would be easy for people to spell.
To her surprise, Alder is not an easy name.
It is so uncommon that it is often confused with other names like Adler and Allred.
Tracy and I spell "Alder" all the time just to save on confusion.
In the 1980s I work for a small computer company in Orem doing hardware design. This company was purchased by the Japanese company Sanyo. During this time, I worked with some engineers and managers in Japan. I enjoyed learning about Japan, its language and its people. All the people I worked with from Japan spoke english. This was wonderful for me not having great language skills myself. As it turns out, Alder is a very difficult word for a Japanese-speaking person to say. There are several reasons for this. Japanese has a phonetic alphabet of 46 sounds. Everything that is said can be written with the phonetic alphabet. There are three character sets used to write the phonetic alphabet, hiragana, katahana and rōmaji. Rōmaji is the romanization of Japanese words using Latin script — that is, the same letters that we use in English.
One thing missing from rōmaji is the letter "L". This is a problem for the word Alder. When asked about the missing "L" they say the letter "L" and "R" are pronounced the same. When I questioned that I got the answer, they are close enough. Another problem is that consonants are always followed by a vowel with "N" being an exception to that rule. "L" is not the only letter missing, "D" is missing as well. Also, words always end with a vowel sound. As it turns out Alder is a big problem for a Japanese speaker.
Mr. Hyouchi is a person that worked for Sanyo and moved for Japan
to the United States to coordinate the work of our group with Sanyo Japan.
He is a very friendly person and nice to be around.
One day he said to me, I want to learn how to say your name correctly.
I said, the way you say my name is fine, and there is no need to change.
He insisted, so I worked with him, and he did get better, but not exact.
In our conversation, I said, Alder is an english word.
He got his English to Japanese dictionary and looked up Alder.
Alder translates to the Japanese word Hannoki ハンノキ.
I like my last name. Over the many years working as an engineer in the computer industry, I have created log in accounts on many, many computers for myself. Whenever I got to pick my login name, which was most of the time, I used alder. I liked the simplicity and uniqueness of alder. A long time ago I worked for Motorola. At that time, Motorola employed over 100,000 people worldwide. As with most large companies, they pick a work email name for you based on your first and last name. Motorola was a little different from most and allowed employees to pick an alias for their email name, as long as no other employee had picked the same name. I got to use alder@motorola.com as my email. You may not think that is cool, but I did. Alder being uncommon has its benefits.
I have liked having a formal name Ronald Paul Alder and
an informal name Ron Alder.