THE NAME ‘ZONICLE’

Now about the name Zonicle: during the revolution of America against Great Britain, my grandfather and two of his brothers . . . left eastern Europe before the revolution and they travelled to America and when America and Britain went to war they decided to be loyal to King George; so they left America to go to a country that was subject to England. In the process, having left America, they were shipwrecked off the coast of Ragged Island . . . .

When I was a little boy, when I first start school and I was able to read, my Dad and everybody else was spelling their name ‘Z-a-n-i-c-a-l’. That’s the way that Dad and everybody else who knew him was spelling his surname. But as a little boy six years of age or seven, six-and-a-half when I begin to learn to read, the sixth child of my father’s family, I became disenchanted with ‘Z-a-n-i-c-a-l’. I didn’t like it, ‘Zanical’. I didn’t like it and I decided to redo it and put in some letters ‘Z-o-n-i-c-l-e’. It sound smoother. . . . It was of the Lord but I didn’t know. It’s true. So, when I start spelling my name as a little boy Joseph Alexander Z-o-n-i-c-l-e, all my brothers, my three oldest sisters and my oldest brothers after me, they do the same thing. Sound smoother. And after we all begin to do it my Mom began to do it also. She was Mary Zanical. I thought I had done something strange. I thought so. I thought it was me, but it wasn’t me. It was God. You know how I know? Because when my last brother Charles Zonicle died in December of 2014, I went to his funeral in Cat Island and when I was there his son said to me, “Uncle, I want to show you something.” And he was still working as a policeman but he was transferred to some part of the Registry in Nassau. That’s where he was working and he had access to records. And he said, “Uncle I want to show you something.” He brought me a record of my grandfather’s marriage. And guess how the name was spelled: Z-o-n-ic-l-e. Isn’t that awesome. It was God doing it.