ROLL OUT THE BARIL

“...and I will write upon him my new name.”  (from Revelation 3:12)

At last week’s retreat, one young pastor came up to me excitedly and announced, “I know your daughter Beth!”.   The problem is, I don’t have a daughter Beth.  The young pastor was dumbfounded because Beth Baril’s father is a Massachusetts pastor and so he assumed it had to be me.  Another guy later commented, “I assume you’re related to Dennis”.  In fact, there is a Pastor Dennis Baril in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.  We have met a few times.  Dennis and I are probably related WAY back but we are not close relatives...at best we’re VERY distant cousins.

A couple of days ago, Claire Grimes, our church’s Secretary, brought in a photo of a Baril couple from Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard that she’d clipped out of the newspaper.  I also explained to her that I didn’t know these people and they’re not closely related to me.

My late uncle, J. Elbert Baril, (he was always known as “Al”) of Miami, Florida, did an exhaustive genealogical study of the Baril family.  In fact, Baril is a very uncommon last name.  There are only a little over 700 households in the entire United States with the last name “Baril”.  Most are in New England and in Michigan, but Barils are found in just about every state.  There are also probably three times as many Barils in Canada as in the U.S., most, but not all in Quebec.

The Barils of FRENCH ancestry in North America pretty much all descend from Jean Baril who immigrated to Quebec from France in the 1600s.  Jean was married three times and fathered seventeen children.  I descend from the second wife.  I say “The Barils of French ancestry” because there are also Barils in the United States who are Jewish and not French at all.  There was a store manager in Framingham around eighteen years ago named Scott Baril.  Scott is Jewish.  His last name Baril is a shortened version of a long, Eastern European name such as “Barilovsky”...something like that.  I actually saw an obituary of a Jewish Baril one time and some of the relatives had the name Baril and others had the longer version... again, I forget exactly what the longer version was.

Baril also can be pronounced several different ways...none is especially correct or incorrect.  In the U.S.A., most Barils pronounce it the way I do which is “Berr-ILL” with the accent definitely on the second syllable and the final letter “L” clearly pronounced.  Others pronounce it “Barrel”.  I HATE that pronunciation, but some Barils DO say “Barrel”.  In French Canada “Baril” has a silent “L”.  It’s pronounced “Barry” or sometimes “BarRIE”...depending on where they put the accent.  Somebody told me they had a Professor Baril at a college in Michigan who pronounced it “Barry”.

It’s interesting when you do a “Baril”  Google search.  There’s a Steve Baril who ran as a Republican candidate for Attorney General of Virginia.  I actually got his e-mail address and communicated with him, which was kind of cool.  (Imagine, Steve COULD someday be PRESIDENT BARIL !)  There’s a Baril, who is originally from Michigan, that runs a website for Barils.  He’s big and bald and has the nickname “Bullfrog Baril”.  We’ve corresponded and he  refers to me as “Cousin Bob Baril”.   There is also a Bob Baril who is a runner.  It’s all pretty interesting.

You may well meet Pastor Dennis Baril or Beth Baril someday...and you’ll have to let them know you’re acquainted with the “other Pastor Baril”!

Incidentally, “Baril” in French is literally “Barrel” or “little keg”.  Most who have studied the name’s origin believe Barils were people in the French speaking areas of Europe who made barrels during the Middle Ages.