Do you have any family names that are used generation after generation???
@royal52gens (5488)
United States
March 3, 2007 6:36am CST
We have a few names that will just drive you crazy as you are researching the family. I have two generations that make me laugh. The first generation all the girls were given the first name Marie and then were commonly called by their middle names. The next generation all the girls were given the middle name of Marie and were commonly called by their first names.
In another line, I found a family that had a son. Named him Andrew. He died early so they named the next boy Andrew. He also died early so again they named the next boy Andrew. They were determined to have a child named Andrew.
I have noticed this practice seems to happen a lot in the larger families that have 10 to 13 children. Have you noticed any trends in your research that are unusual or odd???
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6 responses
@Jans5411 (72)
• United States
5 Mar 07
Our ancestors did this to entertain the generations to come - at least that's my theory.
I have several branchs with the usual Mary, John, Samuel, etc repeating for every generation. However, I have one line that frequently gave the mother's and grandmother's maiden name as a middle name. That helped in sorting out who was who.
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@royal52gens (5488)
• United States
30 May 07
At least they left you some clues. I had two generations that the names were so alike. I had to find dates and other information to sort them out properly. It can be quite entertaining also.
@smithy86 (137)
•
3 Mar 07
Both my mum and my dads side of the family have names that go back pre war. On my dads side they go in sequence of Patrick, Dermot Patrick Dermot Patrick dermot...
Whereas on my mums side its Billy, David, Billy David. I do find it quite strange that both sides of my family tree have this system in place.
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@royal52gens (5488)
• United States
4 Mar 07
That is a very interesting pattern and yes, quite unusual that both sides of your family would have the same pattern for naming family members.
@tammyr (5946)
• Etowah, Tennessee
4 Jun 07
James! We have so many James' in our tree that it can get confusing! One man with the middle name James named 2 of his boys James Wesley and Thomas James. We also have a few Larkin's that I think may have come from a maiden name some where back, but unsure yet.
We have a lot of weird names also because of families with 8-10 children that also have 8-10 children.
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@Fishmomma (11377)
• United States
3 Mar 07
My name is Mary and so is my mother, grandmother and so on. It doesn't matter whether there was one child or more children. My brother is Joseph and same thing many generations have the same name. Its not unusual to me, but I'm Catholic and I know a lot of Catholics named Mary.
@royal52gens (5488)
• United States
4 Mar 07
I agree with you that this may very well be a Catholic thing. Many of the families in my lineage that have this practice with names also happen to be Catholic. I wonder why. I was raised Catholic and I do not recall being taught by the Church to name my children in a certain way.
@songbirdnaimh (1422)
• United States
10 Mar 07
My grandmother's mother was Sybilla, as was her great-grandmother.
My father is George, as was his uncle and grandfather.
Many of my ancestors were in PA since colonial times and there were only a handful of female names that they used: Maria/Mary, Anna, Magdalena/Margaret, Susannah, Hannah, Barbara, Christiana, Elisabeth, Fronica, Catharine/Katharine, Rebecca....so there are many women on my family tree with those names...
