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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: BourneGooner on Tuesday 02 April 19 11:11 BST (UK)
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Hi All
Just a quick realisation really, we've been researching family history for years now, piecing together bits and pieces like a massive jigsaw and can trace family lines back with certainty to at least the 1600's.
Then it suddenly dawns on you that a family name i.e. my wife's, Lock, will simply disappear within the next generation. As I say we've traced the Lock's back to the 1600's but then realised there is no one to carry the name Lock forward. The wife only has sister's so no continuation there, her male 1st cousins are passing without issue, leaving only female family who take on another name.
Sad fact of life I suppose and as I say it only dawns on you when you do this sort of research 400 years of a family name suddenly comes to an end. There are distant cousins who could carry the name on, but not close relatives to the wife's direct line.
So as far as the name Lock is concerned from my wife's point of view they will stop with her.
Just thought I'd share my thoughts really, part and parcel of history I suppose but hey ho the research goes on.
BourneGooner
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I had 3 daughters, obviously they have their father's name, OH is an only child. (Only one daughter has children - 3 daughters!)
My brother has no children.
My female cousin on dad's side has 4 children but obviously they have their father's name.
Her brother has (I think) a boy & a girl but they have been estranged from us all for about 45 years so although my family name will presumably go on if indeed he did have a son, it's getting quite far removed from my descendants.
When I married I did consider using my maiden name double barrelled with my OH's name but it just didn't sound right. At least nowadays that is a modern trend so names might go on longer.
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One of my cousins is the last Pay in our branch of the family. I was thinking about this a while ago and wondering why - there were plenty of male "Pays" in the 1800s. Then I realised that as families got smaller, there was more chance of just one or two girls in a family. Of course there could be two boys, but that doesn't seem to have happened! Does this make sense?
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Its a good topic to discuss
While it affects my personal family name the Gibbins name will go on elsewhere. Though there is still hope and life as I have 1 son and he has a daughter, my brother has no children, my father was an only child.
My grandmothers Simpson line for her family is a Dodo. 1 male and 5 sisters and the male had 6 daughters.
But my DNA goes on
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It is looking like my son is going to be the last of our branch of my husband's family -- although there is still a possibility he might start producing offspring sometime as he is still in his mid-30's.
My husband does not have a brother and his only male cousin does not have any sons
His father did not have any male cousins
His Grandfather did not have any male cousins
So it goes back to descendants of my husband's 2xGreat-Grandfather to carry on the family name -- and even they are somewhat sparse!
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I have one of the most common surnames in England so the name itself will never die out, but on my particular family line it will. I have one brother who has no children and is 60 now and highly unlikely to have any. My sister has three children but they have their father's surname.
My Dad had four siblings who each had one daughter and no other children (that I know of!), so the name won't be carried down on those lines either.
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BourneGooner, have a look here. There might be more of you than you thought.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_(surname)
Many people change the Locks after moving house, of course.
Of course there are your ancestors who used to travel around the country on the Waterways, the canal Locks.
Martin
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My paternal line / maiden name line will die out. No siblings, no cousins, no children, uncles or aunts with the name ... exeunt omnes within a generation. I'm told of one, offspring of my father's (male dead) cousin who has the surname, but no-one else . It's an unusual name. A great pity.
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It was for that very reason I was named Guy.
My mother's maiden surname was Guy but her only brother John Percy Hugh Guy was killed in action in 1944.
I in turn gave my first son the middle name Guy in the hope the name would be carried on but alas that is not to be, but perhaps a future generation will resurrect the name.
Cheers
Guy
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I am the only male descendant of my paternal grandfather, and I only have two daughters who have married and changed their surnames, so this Tarr line has stopped. That grandfather had a brother who I think may have kept the name alive in Dublin.
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For me it matters not. Yes I have a grandson, son of my son and he may continue our line, but for now is still in his teens. But there are stacks of cousins with our name and I think of myself as much of a Draffan and Grant as my paternal line. Then again, who will I be in the next life?
In time the practice of continuing the male surname may cease and the female name be the one to pass on, as happens for a generation or two with the Spanish.
No matter what the name, each and every ancestor and future forebear descendants are part of us.
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We lost our beloved father on 12th March at the age of 97, he was an only son with no sons himself , so now our family name has died out. He had a long life but wanted to reach 100, a fighter to the end.
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My grandfather was one of five brothers but nevertheless only one male child between them and I think he only had daughters? So with him the surname goes. That said, all of my surnames are common as muck and my legal surname technically isn't my biological one anyway (my paternal grandfather's mother ran off with the lodger and her last child, my grandfather, took his name despite not being his biological child) so it doesn't concern me much.
I do use my mother's maiden surname as an online alias mind you.
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My surname only appeared in 1891 when my great grandparents married. Alston is what the clergyman wrote down, but it should have been Alstead.
They had a string of girls but only two boys, one of whom died, unmarried, at the end of the Great War.
That leaves my grandfather, father, my brother and myself as their only male descendants, though one of my nieces has hyphenated her Alston with her husband's surname.
A grand total of 18 people in the branch have used the surname.
So, a very small, independent, branch, and close to extinction. :(
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While there are some more distant male Pine's to carry on the name, there aren't many from my grandfather down. This is despite him having 9 boys. There have been only 7 male grandchildren, and out of those another 7 in the next generation, including one son of my own.
It's all a lottery, both in terms of numbers and sex of any offspring.
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An interesting topic and one that i am familia with as my mothers maiden name was Herweg. My Great G-father came to Australia from Woltwiesche in Germany and arrived in Hobsons Bay in 1872. Frederich Herweg married Elizabeth Bond from Ararat and they had 13 children mostly boys. There are no Herweg males from this line today. So they bred themselves out of existence within 3 generations!
Cheers
Jack Gee
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I have a friend who was adopted, and has been looking for a birth mother for several years! Do you think a DNA test might help??
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Out of my four grandparents, only one of their surnames hasn't died out in our immediate family.
My own surname is coming to a dead end, unless my sister or cousin decide to give their maiden name to their children.
My maternal grandmother had four brothers, so it would seem likely that their family name would have survived. But no - they had six children between them, but only two of them boys. Only one of them had children.... two girls. So in two generations, the name has gone.
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I have a VERY common surname (top 20 in UK). However my Dad and his brother only had daughters, my paternal grandfather was an only child and his father only had a sister.
My daughter on the other hand has a very unusual name 52 people world wide (all related and proven by me) with the exact same spelling. If you add in the 2 main spelling variants whom I have also shown to be descended from the same couple from 200 years ago you have a total of 106 people. In 19 years of research I have yet to find a bearer of the name who is not related in some way and for a start I have gone through every incidence of the name in the Scottish statutory registers as part of my research as well as work on GRO and American and Irish records. Although there are sons in the wider family there is potential for it to die out. Between her Dad and his brother there is only one son, all her grandfather's brothers had only daughters so limited on this particular line.
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The women in my family used to be named like this
(firstname) (mothers surname) (mothers, mother's surname) (fathers surname)
I'm glad they stopped it, LOL
Made tracing female lines easy
Not sure about the male surname fading out, happens to women all the time when we marry.
Some couples take on a new surname altogether to make a new history and not a double barrelled surname either
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I know of two marriages where the husband has taken their wife’s surname. One so that the name was continued (Scottish clan), the other simply because he didn’t like his surname.
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Many people change the Locks after moving house, of course.
Martin
presumably using the Lock-Smiths, Martin? ;D