RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: LucasKernan on Monday 07 November 22 06:29 GMT (UK)
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I've been doing my family tree since 2018. I have common names in my family tree which are:
MALE
·John
·Robert
·James
·Michael
·David
FEMALE
·Jane
·Mary
·Anna
·Elizabeth
·Sarah
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Common names can make it difficult to research your family. ::) In one of mine I have five generations of the first name George.
Quite often the name is that of a parent, grandparent or other relative. A nightmare if they have common surnames like Jones, Smith, White etc. Only too easy to find that you have been following the wrong line.
I hope you have been enjoying your research over the years. It can be quite fascinating finding information that you didn't know about. :D
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The problem I found with repeated names is you can confuse the generation. I had one line where the oldest son was named Samuel. My interest was my 5X great grandfather. I found the baptism of one of his children, Samuel. When I checked he would have 117 years when said child was born. Whoops.
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I've been studying the registers in our parish. Some names are very popular indeed - here are the figures as a percentage of names in the burial register....and if I were to look at 16th-18th century only, there would be even less variety:
female:
Mary 13%
Margaret 11%
Elizabeth 11%
Jane 9%
Agnes 7%
male:
John 32%
Thomas 18%
William 17%
Joseph 7%
Robert 5%
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I have one branch where all the males seem to be called John, and they all married females called Mary.
Being in Wales, I wonder whether they just called themselves such to confuse the English-speaking clergy. ;D
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It would be interesting to know where Lucas' ancestors are mainly from, and what time period. I have checked my FH programme, which only lists names alphabetically, so this is a bit of guesswork. The male names in Lucas' list are very different to mine with few Michael, David or even Robert. The female names are similar.
William
John
George
Edward
Thomas
Ann
Mary
Sarah
Elizabeth
Jane/Margaret
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I have nine Benjamin Chapmans.
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I found three baptisms of William son of William and Margaret with the same surname in the same church in one year. Our ancestors didn't plan to make research easy for us.
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Before my father and grandfather who received names popular at the time, I descend from five successive Stephen Bumsteads. On the other hand, tracing my direct maternal line back six generations back to someone born c1780, every person has different first names,
Steve
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The male names are the usual ones, John, Richard, Thomas, James and William. Richard was a popular name in some of my families from the Fylde region of Lancashire. Female: Alice, Ann, Elizabeth, Ellen, Agnes, Jane, Mary, Catherine, Bridget.
I've mentioned this family before.
My ancestor, John, and Alice, his sister, were children of Richard & Jane & grandchildren of Richard & Jane. John and Alice had a sister, Jane and brothers, Richard, Thomas and William. Alice married a cousin, Richard, son of another John and grandson of a Thomas. Alice & Richard had the same surname. So, Alice had a father, husband and brother with the same forename and surname, although not all at the same time as her brother died young and her father died the year before she married. Alice's husband's brothers were Thomas, William and John. 5 years after Alice's marriage, her brother John also married a cousin, a sister of Richard, his brother-in-law. That meant John had the same name as his father-in-law and a brother-in-law. and his 3 other brothers-in-law had the same names as his own brothers. No prizes for guessing that John & wife named their first 5 sons Richard (x2), Thomas, William and John. The newspaper report of the death of Richard, Alice's husband stated that he was John's brother, which confused me until I realised it meant brother-in-law.
Richard's mother, paternal aunt, daughter, 2 nieces and a sister-in-law were Elizabeth/Betty. Mary was the name of a sister, sister-in-law + 3 nieces. All Elizabeths and Marys had the same surname. 1 Mary and 1 Elizabeth (sisters) changed their forenames by becoming nuns.
All the above people lived in a small town, population around 1,200.
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Or 3 brothers, Thomas, Joseph and Henry Bloggs who all had sons at the same time, and you get 3 Joseph Bloggs born around the same time.