Tittle World

10,000 people worldwide share the surname Tittle. This is the place for anything interesting connected to the word Tittle.

Monday, July 31, 2006

Radio Pioneer

Famous & Interesting 6: LaDonna Tittle
Radio personality LaDonna Tittle was born in Chicago. She attended Dunbar Vocational School in Chicago, graduating in 1964. She then attended Chicago State University, graduating in 1971 with a B.A. in art education and drama with a minor in journalism.
Tittle started her career in radio soon after college, working the midday and evening shifts on Chicago radio station WBEE the year she graduated. After a stint as a weekend radio personality for WNOV radio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Tittle returned to Chicago in 1973 to work the midday and evening shifts for WBMX, where she showcased rhythm and blues songs.
Over the next three decades, Tittle made a name for herself not just on the airwaves of Chicago, but also as a model and an actress. She has done voiceover work in commercials for Kraft, Ameritech, Crisco Oil and Fashion Fair, and has acted in various religious and secular plays in Chicago, including productions for the city's Goodman and Steppenwolf theatres. She also appeared in the film The Relic .
Having served stints as an on-air personality for other Chicago radio stations, such as WJPC, WWHN, WNUA, and WGCI, Tittle is also a host and producer for the Web satellite radio station WGCR, which can be accessed in 294 countries. She is also pursuing a master's degree in art and communications from the Art Institute of Chicago. Tittle is the recipient of numerous public service awards, including the Operation PUSH Woman of the Year Award and the Black Radio Exclusive Air Personality Award.
(information and image from The History Makers website)

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Tittlemice

No compendium of Tittles would be complete without mentioning the mice in the family. The poacher Tommy came first in the nursery rhyme first recorded in 1844:
Little Tommy Tittlemouse
Lived in a little house;
He caught fishes
In other mens' ditches.
He was followed in 1910 by Beatrix Potter's Mrs Tittlemouse (no first name supplied) whose obsessive efforts to keep her house spotlessly clean are undermined by a series of visitors of various insect and amphibian species.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Poet's dark looks inherited from a Tittle


Famous and Interesting 5: Margaret Tittle
The poet Robert Browning (left) was known for his dark complexion and curly black hair (when in Italy he was taken for a local). It appears this came from his grandmother, Margaret Tittle, a woman of mixed race who owned a sugar plantation on St Kitts in the Caribbean.
Remarkably Browning's wife Elizabeth Barrett (right) also had some African in her DNA, hers coming via Jamaica.

Some additional information from Kathleen D. Manchester, Historic heritage of St. Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla (the Author, Trinidad, 1971) pp.16-17. A notable personality was the Rev. John Tittle, who arrived in St. Kitts in 1730, and got into difficulty by encroaching on the public road at North Square Street where he lived. He is interesting in his own right, and also as an ancestor of the poet Robert Browning.
The Rev. gentleman was appointed by the SPG (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel) as attorney for Ponds and Lucas Estate, on condition that he ship all sugar to England to the Society. Yet, by a strange coincidence, privateers kept seizing his ships, which were then diverted to New York, where his brother lived! The SPG eventually dismissed him, after a court case in St. Kitts, when he was to answer several charges of misdemeanor. However, sustained by local support, and secure in his two cures of St. Peter’s and St. George’s, he refused to accept dismissal.
He married between 1731 and 1733 Margaret Starchan, daughter of the surgeon Dr. George Strachan of St. Kitts. Their daughter, Margaret Tittle, married in 1778 the first Robert Browning; and their son Robert, born in 1781, was sent to St. Kitts to work on his mother’s plantation. Young Robert lived and worked on prosperous Anderson Estate, which the Rev. Tittle had managed fro William Coleman, the London merchant, and himself. But Robert conceived such hatred of slavery that he gave up all his West Indian prospects, even supporting himself in St. Kitts by means unconnected with the system. His son was the poet Robert Browning.

Tittle concentrations

Where do you find the most Tittles?
Surname Profiler is a great site which enables you identify where instances of your surname are most concentrated.
It seems that the most Tittles can be found in the North West of England in the county of Cheshire. The 1881 census shows Crewe as the top Tittle area, but by 1998 this Tittle title had passed to Warrington. The top Tittle town is shown as Tarporley in Cheshire, which is between Crewe and Warrington. The 1998 map (left) shows that quite a colony of Tittle's now seems to have settled in Herefordshire.
You are six time more likely to find a Tittle in the United States than in Britain. Alabama is the top Tittle state with five times more Tittles than the average for the USA.
Surname Profiler also tells us where Tittles are concentrated according to Mosaic social profiles. And it appears that over four times more Tittles are found in the category of Corporate Chieftains than any other. As Mosaic explains: Corporate Chieftains contains very wealthy people, many of whom are senior business managers, living in large detached houses in outer metropolitan suburbs. Where did I miss out?
It also reveals that our name is high status (only 8% of people have higher status names) and urban (90% of names are more rural than ours).

Modern renaissance woman

Famous & Interesting 4: Cindy Tittle Moore
Dog expert, feminist writer, collector of Arthurian and Robin Hood books, Cindy appears to be a modern renaissance woman (unless I am mistaken and there are really three Cindys). I believe she resides in Orange County, California.
Click here to view one of her doggy sites.

Despite her ubiquity, this was the only photo I could find, which I suspect is rather out of date. So if you are out there Cindy, send us a new pic.

Tittlewhack

Tittlewhack comes from the Isle of Man. One source says: The common name for mashed potatoes was tittlewhack - a word derived from the sound made by the wooden pestle used to mash big tubs of potatoes...tittlewhack was served in a dish along with a cup of cold butter.
But this description is far too prosaic. It seems that tittlewhack was not so much a dish as an institution, as this account by George Quarrie (known as the Bard of Kirk Bride) which appeared in the Manx Quarterly in 1921, tells us:
"In the North of the Isle of Man, where the land is dry and peculiarly adapted to the growth of potatoes, the long winter evenings, once upon a time, used to be occasionally whiled away by tittlewhack sprees. A case in point occurs to mind, where a large, stone flagged kitchen was the scene, its ceiling almost entirely hidden by hams, shoulders and flitches of bacon, among which, about the centre, high up and not too much in evidence, was a large Christmas kissing-bush, about a yard in diameter, gaily decked in country fashion with ribbons, rosettes, apples, oranges, etc. There were also the liberal 'hibbin and hollin ' decorations still around the walls and on the high mantelpiece, whereon about a dozen candles burned on their various heights of candlesticks-from the short bedroom ones, having trays, snuffers and extinguishers, to those tall, old-fashioned, ornamental ones from fifteen to thirty inches high-all of well polished brass. These lights, backed by several tiers of burnished dish-covers and various pewter drinking vessels, metal tea and coffee-pots, etc., gave a bright, comfortable appearance to the still extant remains of the old-time open fireplace. From the 'swee,' or crane in the chimney, on such an evening hung the big family pot, full to the lid of the favourite 'Bill-John' potatoes, boiling away with their skins on.
Around the room on the big, high-backed settles, on chairs, stools, forms, etc., and out in the long back kitchen adjoining, some dangling their legs from the long table there, and some seated on the stone 'bink' among the milk cans, were the farmer lads and lasses, all bent on fun and mischief,practicingg everlasting larks on one another, with frequent appeals to the high privileges of the big ' kissing-bunch,' as they generally called it.
"When the potatoes were done, they were emptied into many dishes along the tables, and all joined in at the peeling which, as the tubers were steaming hot and liable to fall to pieces, was quite a ticklish kind of work. When peeled, the potatoes were put back into the great pot, and this was set down on the floor on a sheet or tablecloth, which prevents the slipping of the three little pot-legs on the stone floor. All the young fellows now take turns at mashing or ' bruising ' the potatoes, until not the smallest lump is left in the whole mass. Into this, dish after dish of that night's milking, new from the cow, is poured, and then commences the long and brisk stirring by which that delightful dish 'Tittlewhack' is made.
"The pot-stick-a plain, round, wooden porridge stirrer-is briskly moved through the creamy mass so as to execute the figure eight, the operator all the time moving round and round the pot while so stirring.
The sound the pot-stick makes on the sides of the pot very closely resembles the words 'Tittle whack.' Hence the name of the toothsome dish
"It is utterly impossible satisfactorily to describe the fun and many drolleries accompanying this turnabout among a lot of rustics, male and female, old and young. Some of the old cottagers, particularly, provided great merriment. Old Juan-a-Beth, for instance, who, so far as the writer knew, was never seen by mortal man without the broad rim of his old weather-beaten stove-pipe hat resting on his ears and almost entirely hiding his eyes. As Juan put down his cutty clay pipe with the gravity of a man about to lay his neck on the executioner's block, and took hold of the pot-stick, everybody laughed at what was genuinely and irresistibly funny. It was the very farthest thing from Juan's wish or intention to be funny, but lie could no more help making you laugh than lots of others in this world can help making fools of themselves trying to be funny. The screaming stage was reached when Kerry-na-Coolyeh (who well knew Juan's awful austerity) actually attempted to kiss him as he stood right under the license-giving bush. Juan's resentment of this unparalleled liberty made comedy of the most enjoyable kind.
"John Willie's fiddle soon covered the floor with dancers. . . ."

'Football' hero

Famous & Interesting No. 3: Yelberton Abraham Tittle
Tittles from the United States (where they have their own special sports so that only they can be world champtions) will be aware of this famous barer of the Tittle name. Y.A. Distinguished himself in the sport that North Americans erroneously call 'football'. As Wiki says:
Yelberton Abraham Tittle (born October 24, 1926, in Marshall, Texas), better known as Y. A. Tittle, is a former American football quarterback who played for the Baltimore Colts, San Francisco 49ers, and the New York Giants. He is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, inducted in 1971.
See the rest of his Wikipedia entry here.

One jot or one…

Yes, we're in the bible. Mark 5:18 says: "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled". Well in the King James Bible anyway; more modern versions attempt a clearer translation of Jesus' words.
An explanation from Wikipedia:
A tittle is a small distinguishing mark, such as a diacritic or the dot over an i.
It first appeared in Latin manuscripts in the 11th century, to distinguish the letter i from strokes of nearby letters. Although originally a larger mark, it was reduced to a dot when Roman-style typefaces were introduced.
The only place a modern reader is apt to confront this word is during the introduction to the Antithesis of the Law in the Gospel of Matthew: "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled". The quotation uses them as an example of extremely minor details. The phrase "jot and tittle" indicates that every small detail has received attention.
In the Greek original translated as English "jot and tittle" is found iota and keraia. Iota is the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet (ι), but since only capitals were used at the time the Greek New Testament was written (Ι), it probably represents the Hebrew or Aramaic yodh (י) which is the smallest letter of the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets. "Keraia" is a hook or serif, possibly accents in Greek but more likely hooks on Hebrew or Aramaic letters, (ב) versus (כ), or additional marks such as crowns (as Vulgate apex) found in the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, which are the first five books of the Jewish Bible.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Woman astronaut (sort of)

Famous and interesting Tittles No. 2: Theresa Mary Stevens Tittle (nee Stevens)
A woman astronaut Tittle! However she never went into space. Born on 25 November 1960, Springfield, Massachusetts, United States, she was US Air Force operations specialist who entered the space service in 1985 and left in 1988. She was stationed in the Pentagon and later became a Shuttle Flight Controller.

World War II poster

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Island batting hero

Famous and interesting Tittles No. 1: Keithroy Ian Tittle
Ian Tittle is a cricketer for Antigua, Antigua and Barbuda and Leeward Islands. A 32 year old left-handed batsman. See his entry in cricinfo here.
He plays tonight for Antigua and Barbuda in the quarter finals of the Stanford 20:20 Tournament against Nevis.
Update: Unfortunately Nevis won thanks to a storming innings of 213. Antigua could not match that with Ian Tittle scoring a disappointing 6 (run-out).

Origins and connections

What is the origin of the name Tittle?
Does it derive from a nickname given to a talkative person (as in tittle-tattle) or to someone who was small? Do you have any stories or theories? Please post your comments.
Are we all one big family?
Given that Tittle is quite an unusual name, could it be that we had a common ancestor? Or could the name Tittle have emerged seperately in several places. If the latter is the case, then there could be more than one origin. What do you think?