What is in a name

Bryan has been a family name since my grandfather Cecil Bryan Walker. He never liked his first name and went by Bryan most of his life. It was a tradition before that to give a middle name to honor someone of importance. John Walker who emigrated from England in the early 1800s names several of his boys to honor men of importance in his new country: Thomas Jefferson Walker, George Washington Walker and James Madison Walker. George named his first born, my great grandfather James Southard Walker, for the minister who married him. James grew up working several jobs in agriculture and timber in the West and his last born son was born 18 May 1896. What is so special about that time is what will be special this coming May, the heat of a presidential election. A historian from the national archives wrote
The 1896 presidential campaign was a fiercely fought contest between: Republican William McKinley who represented Eastern conservative mercantile and industrial interests and Democrat William Jennings Bryan who stood for Western radical agrarian interests. McKinley was a staunch supporter of high tariffs and the Gold Standard, while Bryan favored easier credit and “free silver.” Thirty-six years old, Bryan was known as the “Boy Orator from the River Platte” and compared by some with the river itself — “a mile wide and an inch deep.” His “Cross of Gold” speech became famous: “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,” he thundered.
That is how Bryan became a family name. It continues not in honor of William Jennings Bryan but in honor of the Bryan’s that came after.
John Bryan Walker