My name is Bernard Michael Rochford.
For most of my life, I’ve been a Brisbane Osteopath, Bernard Michael Rochford. I’ve been a husband, a father, a dog dad, a neighbour, a tenant, a son, a grandson, a brother…
But what I never considered, was that I was also a Rochford.
Sure, I knew that Rochford was my surname; I wrote it nearly every day of my life–first in school, then in University and then at work.
Though it wasn’t until one day, when I had become a Brisbane Osteo, that a patient saw my name and said, “A Fellow Norman!”
Norman? Who is Norman? I looked at him perplexed.
“Oh, you don’t know? Rochford is a Norman name. Could have French or English Origins, but it means your family were from Ireland when the Normans settled there.”
…Ireland? French? This was all news to be. To be honest, I hadn’t a clue who the Normans even were. My parents had always told me my background was English, and in many ways, I’d built my identity around that fact.
I liked tea, much to the chagrin of my friends, I liked Pink Floyd, and even felt a twang of kinship when they said “hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” in the song Time.
Was my entire identity built on a lie? Like some house built on stilts for when it floods?
And thus, the digging began.
I began to research Onomastics, a form of etymology that is specific to names. Suddenly, I began to see patterns everywhere–I quickly became like the patient at my work who identified that I was a Rochford.
‘Ah, your name ends in ‘Kis’, you must be Greek!’
What’s particularly interesting about understanding names is that you immediately understand a level of depth to a person that may not be apparent by looking at them or talking to them.
For example, due to prejudices against the Irish, many Irish surnames were anglicised from their original Gaelic origins. There’s a good article on this here, but in summary, many names dropped the O’ or the Mac, for example, going from O’Cahan to Kane.
So when you see someone whose surname is Kane, you can surmise that their ancestors were Irish and were forced to anglicise their surname under British rule.
All that from just a word!
Who is Brisbane Osteopath Bernard Michael Rochford?
Knowing all of this, I look at my name differently now.
Bernard Michael Rochford.
I’m not just a former Brisbane Osteopath. My name isn’t just a series of lines of ink on paper or pixels on a screen. It’s not just three random words sewn together. My name tells the story of my family; my extended family, and theirs.
I am more than just one man, or an isolated atom; I am a leaf on a long series of vines, composed of Rochfords–or some variation of them–stretching back to the earliest moments of mankind.
Now, you might ask, why are you saying all of this? And it’s a valid question.
Well, let me ask you, what is your ancestry? What does your heritage mean to you?
Precisely because you aren’t a one-person island. You are the result of evolutionary pressures faced by your ancestors. If you have a proclivity toward addiction or depression, you may gain a greater understanding as to why that is the case, or how you can navigate these ailments by looking at those who came before you.
Perhaps you feel doomed to failure; you feel like another hamster on a wheel who can’t separate themselves from the pack–and then you find out that you have an Olympian ancestor or an entrepreneur or philanthropist in the family. This understanding may endow you with a renewed sense of self-worth and confidence, knowing that you come from a lineage of greats. You may come to learn that your ancestors overcame the harshest adversities imaginable (as is often the case when we look to the past) and that you have that same fibre in your being.
Or, perhaps by studying your surname you may learn things about your ancestors which you aren’t proud of; perhaps they owned slaves, or conducted themselves in ways we now know to be immoral or undesirable. Perhaps by studying your lineage, you may understand the deeper, darker elements of your nature, which can equally act as a guide for how you should move through this world, avoiding the mistakes of your predecessors.
This is what I have come to learn throughout the analysis of my name Bernard Michael Rochford–my ancestors weren’t perfect, but they also had much to admire. Many of my Irish ancestors suffered harsh lives under English rule, and many went on to commit crimes and steal in order to navigate those conditions. As penance, they were sent to Australia as convicts.
This isn’t a sunshine-and-rainbows story, nor did it have a happy ending for many of the individuals involved; but on a broader scale, the ending hasn’t been written yet. I am but a chapter in a longer novel of Rochfords, and after I’m gone, (hopefully) many more chapters will be written.
Perhaps one day a fellow Rochford in the year 2124 will look back at Brisbane Osteopath Bernard Michael Rochford, and all of my triumphs, and all of my failures, and it will help them to better understand themselves, in whatever futuristic world exists then.
The next chapter for Bernard Michael Rochford
It is often said that those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it.
By looking at the past, of both myself and my ancestors, I am able to better orient myself toward the future, and away from the mistakes of those who came before me.
As I look to my next chapter, away from being a Brisbane Osteopath and toward being retired, I will now move through the world with a renewed identity and a deeper appreciation for all of my idiosyncrasies and quirks, as though they were a baton passed to me by my parents, passed to them by their parents, and on and on.
What’s in a name?
An awful lot.
