Introductions
Since you clicked on the link marked “About Me” I can only assume that you’re wondering who I am and what I’m about. Of course, it’s also possible that you’re already bored, and you’re just wondering what’s on TV tonight.
I’ll assume you’re so interested for the sake of my ego. My name is Hollis and I’m a software developer. I currently live in Woonsocket, Rhode Island and work at a company called Summit Healthcare Services. I’ve always enjoyed writing but haven’t done any in a long time. Now seems like as good a time as any to rectify that, I hope you enjoy my ramblings.
Why Great Hall?
It may seem a little pretentious to name my blog “the Great Hall”. You might even be asking yourself, what’s so great about this site anyway? Maybe the Good Hall would be more realistic.
Then you might continue this logic and wonder, how is this a hall? Maybe we should refine this a little more, the Good Blog would be a much more appropriate name.
I could answer that the Great Hall has a nicer ring to it…but really I’ll just tell you a little story instead. When my brother and I were born (we’re twins) our parents hadn’t picked out names yet. After three or four days the nurses at the hospital got sick of calling us Baby A and Baby B so one of them showed up with a baby name book and made my parents sit down together and pick names. I suspect that she may have held us hostage to accomplish this.
So our parents took turns with the book and made lists of names they liked. There were only a few names on both lists, and they settled on Hillary for my brother, and Hollis for me (unless we were switched early on…but that’s a different story). My mother told me that, according to the book, “Hollis” is Icelandic for “Of the Great Hall”. This always struck me as a fun name, unfortunately I’ve done extensive searches and can find no indication that this is actually true…most baby names lists I’ve looked at show “Hollis” as a British name meaning “Of the Holly Bush”. I don’t like it as much, it’s not nearly as much fun and it’s slightly emasculating…so I’ve decided to keep Great Hall.
Update
The above “Why Great Hall?” section was written several years ago for my previous web site. I always kind of liked it so I decided to transfer it over to this site, but before doing so made one more search on “Hollis Great Hall”…and lo and behold I found this.
According to this reference my name does indeed mean “of the great hall, island man”…I hadn’t heard the island man part before and I’m not sure what it has to do with a hall but I kind of like it. Sadly it seems that islandman.com is already taken so I think I’ll stick with what I have.