My research project began by conducting interviews with family members. The three people that I interviewed about my last name, Baurichter, were my uncle Ken, my aunt Stefani, and my cousin Brian. The reason I chose them is because they have the most knowledge about our family history and are connected with many other family members. I would have liked to interview my grandma or grandpa, but unfortunately they both passed away already. All of my interviews were done over the telephone because we live kind of far apart. I felt that the interview with my uncle Ken could have been better because he was not very talkative and seemed a little distracted. However, the other two interviews went very well and the interviewees provided me with a lot of good responses.
The first question that I asked them was, “in general what does a name mean to you?“ They all mentioned that the primary reason for having a name is for a means of identification. My aunt and uncle both did not think too much else into what a name means or if it held any other significance. However, my cousin Brian had a different perspective on the importance of a name, in particular a last name. He stated, “I think a first name is a form of identification, but a last name is unique in that it ties you to a clan or ties together a group of people” ("Brian Baurichter"). It never occurred to me before, but what my cousin said is true and interesting in that a family is a group of people who share a common bond. My aunt Stefani particularly did not think too much of a last name and mentioned that she even went as far as using an alias last name for her professional dancing career. She said that she used Richards instead of our Baurichter because nobody could pronounce or spell Baurichter correctly.
I then tried to get their opinions on what the name Baurichter means specifically. They did not know for sure but they all had the same general idea on its definition from our German heritage. They said it meant an engineer, builder, or construction manager in German . My uncle Brian also said it might not be a person but an object like building or bricks. It was interesting to find out that they all had the same interpretation of what it meant and their opinions primarily came from asking other people in the past. Unfortunately my interviewees were not very detailed for this question even though this was my main question of interest. I also asked them if they thought our name had changed over time. Again, I emphasized how their answers did not have to be factual, but rather just their opinions. My aunt Stefani had the simple answer that our last name has not changed as far as she knows. Uncle Ken said that there was probably a good chance that the name has changed over time, maybe to gain privacy, or to run away from social problems. He was just hypothesizing here and not pointing to anything in particular. Ken also mentioned that different parts of our last name could have changed or been combined like “bauer” and “richter.” Similarly, Brian believed that there was a good chance that our name has been changed because almost all languages have evolved over time. He compared it to how we no longer speak Latin or Greek or even German for that matter. A couple of other interesting things did appear to surface while I was interviewing my relatives. One thing I found out was that we have a street on the Westside of Cincinnati named after us. Supposedly one of my great uncles was involved with the health department and he received an honor or award and had the street named after him. Nobody knew the complete story, but mentioned how it would be interesting to find out the facts. As far as our family history is concerned, my cousin Brian has created a family tree that dates back to the early 1800s and that our great, great, great, grandfather settled in Cincinnati in the 1860s.
In conclusion, by interviewing family members I feel as though I got a good start on our research question of the meaning of our last name. There is probably some truth in my interviewees’ opinions, because they all had the same general perspective on what they thought our last name specifically meant in German. In addition, I was also able to come across some good background information on our family history as well as some interesting stories to investigate for the latter part of our project.
Writing this first oral history essay allowed me to brainstorm a couple of different ideas on how to structure the information from my interviews. I initially thought a question and answer format might be appropriate, but I thought that would be too rigid for me to add additional thoughts and perspectives on what the interviewees said. I also thought about separating the essay into different sections, one for each family member but felt that that might be confusing when trying to further examine the information and questions. On the other hand, structuring the report by the questions that were asked, I was able to combine the answers of each family member. That allowed me to compare and contrast the responses by each family member. In addition, it left me the freedom to add additional information where I felt necessary (i.e my opinion on the interviews).