What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?
My middle name is Loia, and for most of my life, it was a mystery.
It’s funny this WordPress prompt comes up today… because I’ve spent decades carrying that name without really knowing why.
I always knew it was rare. I knew it sounded different. But beyond that, it was just this odd, beautiful word that sat between my first and last name like a secret I didn’t yet understand.
What I did know was that it was also my step great-grandfather’s middle name.
He wasn’t related to me by blood at all. He was my great-grandmother’s second husband, and they never had any children together.
On paper, he and I weren’t really connected at all. But life doesn’t always follow paper.
He was always around as I was growing up. He loved me and helped raise me like I was his own. He was an extraordinary man, steady and present, and he stayed in my life until he passed away in the mid-90s.
That middle name tied us together, even if I didn’t know where it came from. I just knew I shared something with him, and that felt important—even if I couldn’t put it into words.
When I started my blog back in November, I chose Loia as my pen name. I wasn’t even sure why I did it at the time.
It just felt right… like the name was waiting for that moment.
Maybe it reminded me of him. Or maybe the name had just been sitting there all along.
Either way… I typed it into the author field. And it just felt right.
Recently, I started digging into it… really digging.
I wanted to know what I’d been carrying all these years.
I found out that Loia was my step great-grandfather’s mother’s maiden name.
She was an Italian immigrant, and she gave that name to her son as his middle name… so he would carry it with him—to keep her lineage from being forgotten.
That’s when it really hit me.
She didn’t want her name, her people, her story to disappear into the dust of time.
So she planted it in her child’s name like a seed.
And now, somehow, I carry it too.
I’m not Italian at all, at least not by blood. Yet here I am, bearing the same name she fought to preserve.
Somehow.. I became part of what she started… long before I was even born.
And somehow I’m the one who ended up running with it.
I traced Loia back to its Latin origin and into the early Roman Empire.
I followed it as far back as the 12th century, to the Loia family in the southern Italian peninsula, in places like Campania. There may even be some Sicilian roots branching off that same line.
I read stories about relatives from those eras, names.. dates.. fragments of lives, and it was fascinating.
It felt like finding my name written in a story that started centuries before me… even though none of them are my blood.
Apparently it’s a rare surname.
Old as dirt…
the kind of name that has seen things.
I could have kept tracing it back even further, but at some point.. I decided to stop.
I knew enough.
I had already learned more than I ever expected to… and the mystery started feeling like it belonged to me.
Growing up, I pronounced it “Loy” like “Joy,” because that’s how I was told by my mother to say it.
Only recently did I learn that the Italian way is more like “LOH-yah.”
It’s interesting hearing the same name two different ways—one from my childhood, the other from Italy.
And then there’s this other detail that feels too poetic to ignore…
My girlfriend is also an Italian/Sicilian immigrant and an American citizen.
The way we met, the timing, the circumstances around it—it all carries this almost storybook quality.
“Coincidence” doesn’t quite feel like the right word anymore.
I don’t know how to explain it fully.
It just feels like there’s a hand at work in my life right now… quietly lining things up.
This old, rare name. The man who loved me like his own. The Italian mother who didn’t want her lineage forgotten. My choice of pen name. My girlfriend’s story.
All these crooked lines seem to be converging in ways I couldn’t have planned if I tried.
So what is my middle name, and what is its meaning or significance?
My middle name is Loia.
It’s the name of a man who helped raise me, the name of an Italian woman who refused to let her family disappear, a name that has survived centuries, continents, and bloodlines to land here, in my life, on my byline.
It reminds me that family isn’t always about blood… and that sometimes the things we carry our whole lives… finally make sense.
“It’s not what you got… it’s what you give. It aint the life you choose… it’s the life you live.”
One last ride for Tonic— a small send-off to a band that carried seasons of my life. Their songs were companions more than tracks… Windows down… volume up… thanks for the road…
Click on thumbnail inside short for full song… also check out my channel.. and if you like… Subscribe… I pray for all my viewers and subscribers nightly… I only run this channel to hopefully help people and also introduce them to some good Christian music…
From Below to Breath…
Jonah 2:2 From the depths… I cried — and He heard me…
I was in a church filled with people — maybe a thousand of them… It felt like home… familiar… safe… But something in the air felt strange… like warmth covering a quiet wrong…
I was sitting with a group of guys — my friends — waiting for the service to start… The room was loud with low voices and shifting bodies… noise that feels alive before something important begins…
Then.. a young guy stepped to the pulpit… mid-twenties… unpolished… unguarded… real…
He started to confess…
Not in a dramatic way — not for attention just a man tired of carrying his weight alone… He confessed his sins… his failures… his sexual mistakes… with girls in the church…
The room changed…
Whispers started… Then snickers… Then laughter…
People leaned into each other… smiling behind their hands… Judging… Feasting on the fall of someone brave enough to bleed in public…
I felt my chest tighten…
Not at him — at them…
I felt angry… Ashamed… Disgusted… I was pissed…
This was supposed to be a place of mercy… A greenhouse… where things nurture… instead.. it felt like a courtroom with no grace…
I looked around at the faces of people… I didn’t recognize the love I thought lived here…
I wanted out…
So I stood up…
I walked past the rows… Past the whispers… Past the laughter… Past the pulpit… that was no longer an altar… but a guillotine… and the applause for the fallen… was the new amen…
I pushed open the doors… as I stepped outside… I felt cleansed… baptized… free as a wet bird drenched in truth…
then I woke up…
it was just a dream…
…….🚶♂️→🤫→😂→⛪️⚔️→👏⬇️🙏❌→🚪→💧†→🐦💦✨
Who knows who is both your best friend and brother… When everyone’s deserted you… Who’d shoot first and ask questions later… If anybody’s messed with you…
Pretty soon we’ll all be tumblin’ like a barrel… Thrown from the top of the waterfall… I’m drownin’ in piranhas in the river… Man… what a drag!
I was talkin’ to my teacher… Said I didn’t have a clue… I think my principles are reachin’…
I was asleep… — until I opened my eyes… — I was in an old town… a third world place…
Cobblestone streets… — run down… — falling apart…
There were people everywhere— on the outside.. they seemed okay… but once they opened their mouths… — I saw they were falling apart too…
Nothing but rusted words… — no faith… — no hope… — nothing good to say… They believed in nothing…
Just empty speech… empty phrases… — nothing on the inside… Painted smiles that no one cares to look through… So I shook it off me— — continued on…
In the distance.. I could see huge pyramid-like structures… They were white marble— — steep… — with hewn steps stretching across… Carved for someone braver… — layered one upon another… — like a man-made mountain range…
Magnificent to look at… — like the teeth of God… — so high up… — bruising the sky… — such a challenge…
Something inside me cried out… Something feral and buried… I knew— I must climb…
I started walking toward them… — because I’m about to move up… 😉
The people started yelling at me— Their voices like a flock of crows… — black… — circling…
You’re not good enough… you cant… you wont make it… it’s impossible… it’s too much… you’re crazy… you’re going to regret it… you will die… Yada… yada… yada…
Wrong words— — like an avalanche… — thundering down from the mountains… Bursting into sparks as they hit me— straight firing me up… setting my spirit ablaze…
My eyes locked… I started to run — harder… — faster… — gaining momentum… — like jets on a runway…
I took off… — climbing higher… — and higher…
The incline at times seemed straight up… — I could actually feel myself getting tired…
But I kept on— — never thought of giving up… — never worried… — never stopping… — never slowing to catch my breath…
I’ve never had a better feeling in my life… — awake or asleep… — I felt so alive… — so happy… — it was unreal…
So determined — — no one and nothing could stop me… — nothing was impossible…
It was the greatest feeling ever… I carried it with me all day after waking…
Mountains mean nothing…
And soon I will rest… — on the summit… — where she waits… Take her hand… — be her man…
I climb for that moment… — a deep kiss… — a life… — that quiets the world below
Little by little… day by day…
Habakkuk 3:19
“The Lord God is my strength… and He will make my feet like deer’s feet… and He will make me walk upon my high places…”
Heart of Loia `'.,°~ 