Iona

'But she doesn't count', says my friend over a supper for Thanksgiving.  'You've never met her'.  I refer her to my specific wording: 'I will try to discover the middle name of someone I do not know'.  Reluctantly, she gives me the middle name of her, relatively, newly arrived niece who lives between St Andrews and Edinburgh.  She is named after a small island in the Inner Hebrides off the western coast of Scotland.  'It's very left-wing', says my friend.

(Iona has a resident population of 125.  During the Early Middle Ages it was home to an important monastery and became a renowned centre of learning.  It is now home to 'The Iona Community'; a group of men and women from different walks of Christian life who share 'an experience of the liberating power of Jesus Christ, and a commitment to the personal and social transformation that spring from the vision and values of the gospel'.  They beckon us to 'come share our life', and run residential centres where 'individuals and groups take part in weeks on a variety of themes with an exciting range of leaders'.  

Samuel Johnson wrote 'That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer amid the ruins of Iona'.  It is also the setting of the 1998 Dorothy Martin mystery by Jeanne M. Dams, Holy Terror of the Hebrides.)