What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

We were big on middle names in my family. Many used their middle name as their first name. I was not too hot on my middle name. It seemed so boring and so old fashioned. I guess when I knew it was my grandma’s name I felt more warm towards it. She was a strong woman. A mother of four boys and an alcoholic husband. She had to leave him for her and their sons survival. Trained as a primary school teacher, Grandma Margaret needed to go back to work. In those days, especially in Catholic circles, single women, widows and elderly women taught. Women separated from their husbands did not. So it was assumed Grandma was a widow. When her husband, my grandpa, turned up sober about 15 years later she had to explain he wasn’t dead! Her sons all did really well. She was a strong female survivor. They had many years of marriage after he returned sober until they passed away.

When I got to know Venerable Margaret Sinclair (1900-1925), Scotland’s nearly Saint, I really began to feel my middle name Margaret was special. Please watch this short video below from one of the annual Masses for Venerable Margaret Sinclair. My husband Ronnie and I are interviewed on our testimony of what Venerable Margaret Sinclair has done for us.

Venerable Margaret’s Sinclair’s ordinariness and nearness is sublime.

My husband and I were living around the corner from Venerable Margaret’s shrine at St Patrick’s church in Edinburgh’s Cowgate. We went through a difficult time and her intercession really saved our lives and our relationship.

When Pope John Paul II visited Scotland in 1982 he called for prayers for beatification for this ‘Factory Saint’. Venerable Margaret Sinclair had worked in factories. She had experienced discrimination and bullying at work over her Catholic faith. She is so easy to relate to. Our lives would have been so different but thanks to Venerable Margaret Sinclair. Another wonderful woman to honour on International Women’s Day 2026.