Hello, my name is Frances née Hoyte. Frances means ‘from France’ according to Google. AI is more expansive : ‘Frances is the feminine form of Francis, derived from the Latin Franciscus meaning a person from France.’ The name was popularised during the Middle Ages because of St Francis of Assisi, although I can assure you I’m no saint. It became associated with concepts of freedom, humility, kindness and devotion. The other Latin root Francis means free or free person. So I am Frances the free and a free woman.
My mother wanted to call me Francesca, my father said no, Frances will do. My father’s half sister arrived from Ghana at the age of 16 and came to live with us in Bredbury, a small village near Stockport, Manchester. Her arrival coincided with my birth three days later and her name was Frances. Thereafter she was known as Big F and I was Little F. My father called me Fantosh, my mother called me Chick, my brother, somewhat disparagingly, called me Baby, my husband called me Fan and my current partner calls me Franny or Francie . But to the rest of the world I’ve always been Frances with any attempts to the contrary firmly rebutted. As to the epithet ‘free woman,’ I am indeed a free woman in many respects. So has my name defined me, or have I simply grown into it? In respect of the devotion and humility bit, maybe this is why one of my favourite colours is blue.
How free am I? I’ve always been a friendly, chatty person, finding it easy to approach strangers and chat with them. My parents tried to curb this in me; I suppose they thought I was naive and would therefore be taken advantage of. It’s a brilliant way of finding out all sorts of interesting things about people, so many stories. I’m impulsive too. This has landed me in trouble many a time – more about this later.
Now to my maiden name, Hoyte. Myself and other family members have delved into our slavery past. I am mixed race, black Caribbean and English. My father was black, his parents originally from Trinidad and British Guiana. We’ve discovered that the name Hoyte came from two sugar cane plantation owners in Barbados. So we believe that some of our slave ancestors were on these plantations. But of course we’ll never know for sure. In a strange way I’m proud of my slave ancestry, because of the way that these people somehow managed to rise up and, post slavery, become educated and better themselves. My grandfather, Ralph David SnClair Hoyte, studied medicine in Edinburgh. I only have one photo of him from his student days; there he is looking proudly out of the black and white picture frame, dressed in dark trousers, a waistcoat and white spats covering his shoes. Quite the dapper young man about town!