What's in a Nickname? The Story of Shib
How one peculiar family nickname led me through orphanages, asylums, and a century of secrets
What's the wildest nickname in your family? For me, it's "Shib," a nickname so baffling it defies logic, family lore, and even the internet's smartest AI tools. This is what my grand-uncle Loren’s brothers called him back in Nebraska. Nicknames have always been puzzles—tiny mysteries tucked into the corners of our family trees. The real fun is in trying to solve them.
This video explores using Gemini’s Deep Research to help with research and writers’ block. It also has a surprise story about a nickname found in a yearbook, years after the yearbook signer passed away.
Loren's Life: A Mystery and a Legacy
Loren Elias Carver was born in Wisconsin in 1861. He first married Sylvia Samantha Elliott. After she passed away in 1900, he married Ella Trout. They moved first to Canada, then to Spokane, Washington.
One of the most poignant discoveries I made about Loren was through a DNA cousin I found on Ancestry. She turned out to be Loren's 90-year-old granddaughter.
When I reached out to her, she told me she'd grown up in an orphanage, believing her mother Nellie had died—a story she only recently discovered wasn't true. Her mother had not died. She apologized for not having any stories about Loren, saying her connection to him felt as distant as the pages of a forgotten book.
I sent her what I could find. "I came across an article about your family," I wrote to her, "and looking around at my own family here today, I thought of you.” I wondered how her life might have been different if she had stayed with her mother. Perhaps the orphanage was a blessing in disguise.
The article was from the Spokane Chronicle, dated April 14, 1909.
It read: "People in the neighborhood of 410 Providence Avenue report that the family of L. E. Carver, living at that number, is in need of help." Five children under school age lived there, including newborn twins who arrived without even basic necessities. Those twins were her uncles - Clarence and Claude. Neither survived their first month.
The story only gets harder from there. By 1920, the family moved to Shoshone, Idaho, where Loren likely sought work in the mines. By 1930, it appears everything had fallen apart. The older boys, Frank and Harry, were living as boarders in Shoshone - Frank working at a lead smelter, Harry as a cook in a restaurant. The youngest girls, just 16 and 12, were living as lodgers in Spokane. Ella, their mother, was listed as an inmate at Eastern State Hospital's Ward G, a psychiatric facility.
And Nellie, my cousin's mother? Her whereabouts were unclear.
I don’t know if it helped my cousin to understand the potential circumstances that might lead to being left at an orphanage or not. Sending messages via Ancestry can feel like talking into a black hole. You never know for sure if the recipient even saw your note.
Last night I decided to ask Google’s newest research tool about Uncle Loren’s nickname, “Shib.” This is Gemini 1.5 Pro with Deep Research. If you haven't played with it yet, it's a lot like Perplexity AI, but it's the Google version - an advanced tool that can search through mountains of historical data and connect dots that might take us weeks to piece together. This offering is currently only available with a subscription. It seems promising as a research tool, so I decided to give it a try.
I asked it about common nickname origins first. It gave me solid information - like how 'Hank' came from 'Henry' through medieval nicknames, or how 'Ned' evolved from 'Edward.' This kind of context can make old documents come alive when we're trying to decipher names.
But when I asked about “Shib”? The AI was as perplexed as I was.
What are my thoughts on Google's Deep Research? In my limited experience, I would say it's more broad than deep. It hits a lot of websites, those that are available and not behind paywalls. And it finds so many things so quickly that I think it's an excellent way to start your research. In the case of something like “hey tell me about nicknames” it is very good.
Even though Gemini couldn't solve the riddle of "Shib," it provided some resources with further nickname information for family historians.
Nicknames Past and Present by Christine Rose is a guide to understanding the origins of historical nicknames.
Nicknames | Ancestry® Family History Learning Hub: https://www.ancestry.com/c/family-history-learning-hub/nicknames
Traditional Nicknames in Old Documents - A Wiki List - FamilySearch: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Traditional_Nicknames_in_Old_Documents_-_A_Wiki_List
Whenever I find another document with "Shib" scrawled next to Loren's name, I think about that house on Providence Avenue, about those five little children, about Ella in Ward G and the family scattered across Idaho and Washington.
About my cousin in the orphanage.
A nickname might seem like such a small detail, but it's one of the few traces of warmth in this story - evidence of a childhood where Loren was just a little boy with brothers who called him "Shib," before life got so hard.
If you're staring at an old family record and wondering why "Sadie" keeps popping up next to "Sarah," or if you've ever puzzled over an unusual nickname like "Shib," I'd love to hear about it. Behind every nickname is a story. What’s yours?
Here is a link to the full Nickname report that Gemini 1.5 Pro with Deep Research provided. This link goes to a Google Doc that has been turned into a web page. Nicknames Origin and History.
Some nicknames in my family are:
Racky (racked the balls in a billard parlor when he was a young teenager.
Yaya - sibling couldn’t pronounce Angela.
Mooch - resemblance to Moochie in Disney film many years ago.
My first guess is the nickname came from a sibling's mispronunciation but Shib sounds nothing like Loren. Shib = sibling? Probably a stretch. My husband had an Uncle Chink because he looked Chinese as a baby (it was not intended as a racial slur - remember the time and place). The point is, the nickname may have had meaning to the family but no one else.