I came across a blog post today, “The Theory of Eight Surnames,” in which the writer shared some advice he received while overseas. They told him everyone should be able to recite what I’m referring to as “the great eight” or the eight surnames of your great-grandparents.
For me, I have two sets since I was adopted so I would need to shoot for 16 to remember. If you add in my husband’s line, I’m up to 24. Instead of taking up the challenge and trying to list them, I thought it would be interesting to see it more visually so I used Powerpoint to make an image of them for each line: bio, adopted, and marital. Below are the ones I created. I think if I play around with the colors, I probably could come up with a nice photo I could frame for our wall at home.
If you want to make one of your own, and you have Powerpoint, click on the last one below to download a template with generic names you can change for your own.
