In the last post I started it with the following.......

Who do I think I am.....well up until recently I was just plain Souheil Khoury. But now I know I am Souheil Sami Najib Boulos Geryas Boulos Rizk Khoury.

I thought I would elaborate. In Lebanon most people don't have a middle name. Whether your male or you will take on your fathers name as a middle name. This can lead to your surname changing sometimes.

Souheil is my name....Sami is my fathers name.....Najib is my Grandfather....Boulos is my Great Grandfather....Geryas is my Great Great Grandfather....Boulos is my Great Great Great Grandfather and founder of our village Derdghaya. Now I also had the name Rizk in there, Rizk is our original surname. Boulos Rizk founded our village and at some stage became a priest: Khoury means Priest. They would have been referred to as bayt el khoury which means household of the priest, this is where over time the surname would have changed.

In Derdghaya I would be known as Souheil Sami, without a mention of my surname and that would be enough for people to know who I am. For instance if you mentioned my Grandfather Najib Khoury no one would have any idea who you were talking about....but if I was to say my Grandfather was Najib Boulos everyone in town would know who he was.

This took me a bit of time to get my head around but when I speak Derdghaya genealogy with my father I have to mention names of people in this way or he has no idea who I'm talking about. Another way people are referred to is the father of the oldest son, for instance my father is referred to as Abu Issam.....father of Issam. People have known father for a lifetime and wouldn't know his name was Sami, they have always known him as Abu Issam.

When I was in Lebanon last year I would be up at the shops and people realising I was from Australia would ask me who I was was. If I said to them I was Sami Khoury's son they would look quizzically at me until I told them I was the youngest son of Abu Issam. Then they would welcome me with open arms.