I published this back in April 2012 – a few months after I started Leumesin Design after being made redundant from a 20 year job at Southern Cross University. Still relevant today, particularly as I’m going to be renaming and rebranding Made in Lismore. Yup, it’s time for some change!!
I’d always wanted to draw everything I do under the one banner but it’s never really quite happened, but now, I can move forward with the original plan and although Made in Lismore will certainly still exist and I’ll be doing much the same things, ie locally handmade gorgeousness, it will take a little while to make the full move to Leumesin Handmade so there’ll be a bit of hopping between names.
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Original post follows …
22 April 2012
How do you decide on a business name? Just using your name + whatever you do can work well but can there be more?
This is my second business. The first one was a very long time ago (before we had the internet, shock horror!) and I was “Ellen Waterhouse Secretarial Services”. Not very exciting, but it certainly served a purpose. It told people what I did and that’s the whole idea, right?!
This time though, I wanted to have a name. But what? Ellen Kronen Website Design certainly wasn’t doing it for me! So, when I was tossing around some ideas, I was looking everywhere for inspiration. At the time, I was doing quite a lot of family history research, and eventually I found the name Leumesin, added Design, and it just worked! Who would’ve guessed I’d settle on a very old family name, not necessarily because of the history, but because it “sings” to me!
If you want to know more … my father always said that you could trace the Waterhouses back to Mohammed. He wasn’t joking (I think!). This has actually been researched extensively, and is well documented.
“… the Waterhouse family can trace its origins to Guiscard de Leumesin, Lord de Molyns, Constable of Normandy who lived in the beginning of the 11th Century. In old monastic records the family was described as one of the most ancient houses in the Province of Normandy.”
(Olsson, M., The Waterhouse Padman Family History, 1987. Booralong Publications, Queensland, p12.)
And, in a separate typed note in that book,
“The original Waterhouse was a Baron de Leumesin or Lymosin, ie: a Lemosin or man of Limoges. In England, the name gradually became L’Eaumeson. The first to Anglicise the name was Roger de Leumesin, who called himself Roger de Waterhouse. This was apparently latinised a little later into Aquadomus when it was the vogue to have a Latin appellative. Guiscard de Leumesin was a great man in the right on Henry 1 (1112).
It’s an interesting family tree, as most are, and I am very pleased it led me to my business name!
