My mother had a favorite Uncle Jeff, a Utah man named Jefferson Hunt. When I was born, my mother decided to have a Jeff of her own, and wanted to name me Jefferson. However, my oldest brother, who was 16 at the time, told her not to use "Jefferson" but to draw on our British heritage to get another kind of "Jeff". He convinced her to spell it like Chaucer did, but misspelled it to GeoffERy. Oh well. She still called me Jeff all her life, and I'm plain old Jeff to everyone who knows me.