History Before It Was Called History

  For most of my life I have had a curiosity about the origin and history of my family. It started in my teenage years and has followed me to the present. My paternal grandmother helped me in my quest for the answers to the name of Osborne. What I was able to find out initially from newspaper articles and letters was,” that among the Norse Invaders who entered England in the latter part of the 8 th century or possibly into the 9 th century, there came a member of the Osborne family, who became the head of a posterity which has become quite numerous and whose representatives have figured in no small way in the history of their adoptive country.” [1] One of the unique traits of the Scandinavian people is how they came up with the names of the families. Usually, these names derived from a characteristic which was unique to their individualities. The name Osborne appears to come from the “old Norse” language where” Os” means hero and “Bhorn” means bear.   Which implies that ...