Okay, if she was born in 1927, that was just before the Great Depression and I bet her parents couldn't keep her because they had no money. She may have been farmed out to an aunt and/or may have spent some time in a home. Lots of kids got given away or put in homes for a year or two until parents or other relatives were well enough off again to reclaim them.

My aunt changed her first name legally in her 50's. She didn't like her birth name. Someone obviously didn't like your mother's name, maybe even your mother although 16 is not a good age when it sounds like people would allow that for your mother so maybe the aunt or whoever was caring for her didn't like the names.

Other people's lives aren't really our "business" even though they're our parents or siblings. It's nice to know stuff but other people can't necessarily tell things well or feel badly about themselves, etc. just like we do. Different generations have a hard time understanding each other because the experiences are so different. No way we can understand the Depression and WWII, etc. as they lived it anymore than our kids can understand the Beatles or Cold War, Nixon, etc.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...epression.aspx