I was almost a ‘Michael’, but my family decided to name me ‘Daniel Eliot Boese’.

Daniel’ means ‘God’s Judge’; ‘Eliot‘, depending on who you ask, could mean ‘height’; and ‘Boese’, again depending on who you ask, is either ‘Bush’ or ‘Wicked’. (One genealogist I corresponded with had a story about some robber-knights who’d gotten dubbed ‘the wicked ones’, and eventually wanted to go civic.) Thus, if you tilt your head and squint just right, it’s possible to interpret my name as being translatable into something like either ‘Estimator of the tallness of shrubberies’ or ‘Judge of the height of God’s wickedness’. Since I’m as fond of the IPU and the FSM as the next atheist, I tend to suggest the latter whenever the topic comes up.

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