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Beginners => Family History Beginners Board => Topic started by: Burto on Wednesday 19 March 08 17:18 GMT (UK)
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Hi,
Does anyone know if any websites exist that list popular and more unusual names given to people in the early 19th Century?
I have someone in my family who was called Saloma Asenath and wondered if this was common and if not where it may have come from? I've found that the names are Hebrew and Asenath is also Egyptian, but none of my other ancestors have these names!
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Hi,
Does anyone know if any websites exist that list popular and more unusual names given to people in the early 19th Century?
Hi, I have looked for this in the past on the Internet, and so far haven't found anything appropriate. I suppose the answers would be different wherever you are looking - America would have had different fashions in names to the UK, and Australia is likely to have been different again. Even in the UK there would be differences, Scottish names having an number of differences to English names and a list for my Manx ancestors would include the relatively common name "Christian" for women. I think there is actually quite a need for something of this type.
I have a useful book, which I'm sure must be out of print as it was published in 1977, and so is quite useless for anything in the last 30 years. It may however, be possible to get a copy through a second hand book dealer. It's called - "First Names First" by Leslie Alan Dunkling. I read in the cover that Mr Dunkling was the secretary of "The Names Society" founded in 1969, but unfortunately, a Google for this has failed to turn up anything meaningful.
This book discusses names in several different countries and in different time periods. For example: First Names in the Middle Ages; Protestant Names of the 16th & 17th C; Pet Names; Boys Names most frequently used in the USA; Black American Names; Canadian First Names; Scottish First Names; Australian First Names; etc. etc. For many of these there are supporting tables at 25 year intervals. The most useful for me has been the table of boys and girls names in England and Wales - which shows incidence per 10,000 births of a name at intervals from 1850 to 1975. For example, this shows Elizabeth at 1002 per 10,000 in 1850, but falling to 52 per 10,000 by 1975. Other names do not show until the end of the period, or don't appear again after the first time.
I have someone in my family who was called Saloma Asenath and wondered if this was common and if not where it may have come from? I've found that the names are Hebrew and Asenath is also Egyptian, but none of my other ancestors have these names!
Quite a lot of uncommon names are listed, but neither of these seem to show up in exactly those forms. Is Saloma perhaps a variation of Salome? If there are no family links which would explain these links, are they from the bible, or even misspellings of biblical names?
I would certainly find an up to date names web-site useful. The data must be out there somewhere - the top ten names of the previous year generally appear in the newspapers early in January.
Cheers
KJ
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One of the most fruitful sources of given names at the time you are talking about was the Bible. Both Salome (of which Saloma must be a variant) and Asenath are Biblical names.
Anna :)
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Hi,
Thanks for that...yes Saloma and Salome have both appeared! Her sister my ancestor was called Joseph Ann-not Josephine-which is a bit odd too!
I've never come across Salome or Asenath before and they seem quite fancy names compared to everyone else in my tree, Thomas, Elizabeth, William, Ann etc. I'd be interested to see how many Salome's and Asenath's per 10,000 there were between 1800-1850!!!!
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See Behind the Name - the Etymology and History of First Names
http://www.behindthename.com/
ASENATH Gender: Feminine Usage: Biblical
Means "she belongs to her father" in Egyptian. In the Old Testament this is the name of Joseph's Egyptian wife.
SALOME Gender: Feminine Usage: English, German, Biblical
From an Aramaic name which was related to the Hebrew word (shalom) meaning "peace".
Stan