A Drake By Any Other Name:

So here's a bit of info from Ancestry.com:

"English: from the Old English by name Draca, meaning ‘snake’ or ‘dragon’, Middle English Drake, or sometimes from the Old Norse cognate Draki. Both are common surnames and, less frequently, personal names. Both the Old English and the Old Norse forms are from Latin draco ‘snake’, ‘monster’ (see Dragon).  As in Draco Mallfoy.

That seems to be the general consensus.

But then it gets a little crazy:  i have found some definitions that say that if someone had the nickname of Drake, that person would be "formidable and fierce in battle."

And I've found several locations that state that Drake came from the word Draker  which is a standard bearer.  In other words the guy that holds the flag.  Not a desirable position to be in during battle, I would think.

And then there is Draco which supposedly means dragon and a drake that is a male mallard duck.  I think our Drake men would prefer that they are named for fearless, ferocious dragons, rather than for a duck.  Because we waddle like ducks?  Because we are constantly quacking.  Or maybe it's a compliment, that we have nice tail feathers!

Other ways I have seen Drake spelled:  Drak (like Quack), Draike, Draik and Drayke.

There are a lot of Drake Family Crests, but all of them pretty much have a dragon on them.  This is my favorite:

There's More to Me Than Being a Drake

Sometimes I get hung up on my families.  It's fun researching the Drake side of me for several reasons.  First, there is a paper trail.  When we start getting way back, many of my family were men who owned their own businesses and men of the sea -- not just sailors, but men who owned their own boats.  Later we became farmers, but that was much later.  Most of the men in the family read.  We came from money and I think we treated our women -- wives, mothers and daughters as equals.  There has been a lot of stuff written about the Drakes.  And, you can spend weeks and weeks jumping from Drake family tree to Drake family tree on Ancestry.com.

But sometimes I've got to suck it up and spread my time around.  I mean, why continue to go over someone else's research on an already well documented family.  So today I'll give you a little background on Illda Martha Austin Hughes.  

Considering she lived with me for about a year, I really don't know much about her.  I know that she was born 15 Mar 1895 in Toledo, Lucas, Ohio.  Her mother was Minnie M Daniels, a milliner, and her dad was Dennis E Austin, a railroad man.  As a kid, I knew that Illda LOVED Texas.  I remember them closing the store for a few weeks and racing off to Texas.  Galveston.  I knew that Illda and her husband Cleo, had bought land in Texas and were planning on retiring there.  I knew that at one time, Illda had been a nurse.  She had bad eyes, she had bad feet, and she had bad legs.  She was a good cook and a good artist.  She was very quiet and shy, but every once in a while, she would whisper a zinger that would have me laughing all day.  She had a temper.  She always told me that she was Irish.  She worked like a dog in their grocery store.  She wasn't very tall.  By the time she came to live with me, I towered over her.  I'm thinking she was around 5'0" or 5'2"

Here is a picture of her: