some of you may remember my enquiry on these boards a couple of weeks ago as to the origins of the 'crab' portion of colin's username.
some of you may not. whatever.
enjoy.

"Good evening Jon,

I often get e-mails, letters and phone calls about the origins of Mr
Roberts' name, and so I have copy and pasted the following from a previous
enquiry. I hope this will give you enough information.
The story of the name Crablin actually dates back to the late 16th century,
where one of Mr Roberts' ancestors was one of the first people in the
Western World to have a crab collection. Michael Curtis was this man's name,
and if you travel to Kyoto, Japan, there is a small park named in his honour
after he went there in search of a crab which he had heard had a body the
size of a dinner plate. This was of course named at a later date the
Japanese Spider Crab. It was in Japan where Mr Curtis met a beautiful
Japanese lady called Haruna Ling, who he later married and bought home to
England.
And so, Mr Curtis had a wonderful collection of mainly preserved crabs and
his collection was the envy of the crab world. He was very secretive about
where his collection was held, and if crab enthusiasts wanted to view a
particular crab, he would have it moved from his collection to one of a
range of locations across the UK in order to preserve the whereabouts of his
valuable collection.
At the time, he had competition for the world's largest crab collection from
a young man called Andrew Wallin, who Mr Curtis believed was a young
pretender and needed more experience to fully develop an understanding of
crabs. Mr Wallin mocked Mr Curtis for being so involved, suggesting he
wanted to marry some of his crabs and sarcastically called him the Crab
Lord. Mr Curtis either did not pick up on the sarcasm or purposely ignored
it and felt that being a Crab Lord was an honour.
In later years, when Mr Curtis was too old to travel to far flung corners of
the world in search of crabs, he retired to a large manor house in rural
Hampshire where he spent much time which his grandchildren. One of whom was
William Curtis, a lively child with a vivid imagination. He had heard about
his grandfather being named the Crab Lord and so he referred to his
Grandfather as Crab Lord and more importantly his Grandmother as Crab Ling.
Something she didn't really like, but accepted it to please young William.
When Mr Curtis died in 1641, he left his crab collection to William Curtis
and when he went on to marry and have children. The first of which he named
after his Grandmother, Haruna Curtis. As she grew up, William used the
nickname he had used on his grandmother, Crab Ling, and over the years,
traditions changed, births, marriages and deaths, it became the tradition in
the blood line to nickname your first born with the name a young William
Curtis had used on his grandmother. A female child would be Crabling; a male
first born would be Crablin.
Mr Roberts was a first born and so his father adhered to the tradition
dating back to Michael Curtis back in the late 16th century.

I do hope that I have given enough detail for you to get a brief
understanding of the history and origins of Crablin/Crabling.
If you have any further queries, please let me know and I'll be happy to
delve deeper.

Kind regards,

Dave Hedges"