etiquette for uniquely identifying namesakes?

[nudge67]

Hi all,

currently writing a family history, and I need to clearly identify a father and son who share the same name, and also a mother and daughter who do the same. What is the correct etiquette? Senior & junior? Roman numerals?

The first three known generations in the family looks like this:

John Edwards
/
Thomas Henry Edwards (son) m. Elizabeth
/
Thomas Henry Edwards (son)
Elizabeth Edwards (daughter)
John Edwards (son)

The main difficulty is keeping the reader from being confused by the two TH Edwards's.

Cheers
Nudge

[lizdb]

Oh how I empathise!

One way is, having introduced a "character", usually at their birth, you then refer to them as (e.g.) Thomas (born 1866) or Thomas (born 1892) when referring to them again.

Or in your example you could use Thomas (son of John) and Thomas (son of Thomas).

[behindthefrogs]

I follow Lizdb and write Matthew (1839) but miss out the word born.  This overcomes the ambiguity of senior/junior or "son of". In my case I have seven generations of Matthews and a number of cousins as well.  Fortunately so far I have had two born in the same year but I guess I could always extend the date if that happens.

David

[wildtech]

This happened in my family.  My great great grandfather Thomas Wild, his son Thomas and his grandson Thomas were all working in the family business so to distinguish they adopted the suffixes Senior and Junior.  My grandfather, Thomas junior, found this cumbersome and named his son Thomas Malcolm, known as Malcolm.  When it comes to the family tree I am actually the 8th Thomas Wild (I too am known by my middle name though) and my son is the 9th in direct line Thomas son of Thomas.  So on the tree I use Roman Numerals making me Thomas Christopher Wild VIII.

[behindthefrogs]

The problem with the Roman Numeral solution is what do you do when you get back another generation and find the father was yet again called Thomas?  I have learned over the years to never number anything starting form the top of your tree you always find another one and then have to decide whether to deal with the trauma of renumbering.

David

[wildtech]

The problem with the Roman Numeral solution is what do you do when you get back another generation and find the father was yet again called Thomas? 

Good point

I'm lucky though I know the father of Thomas I was James 

[lizdb]

Bet James's dad was a Thomas, though! 

[wildtech]

Actually James is my 6th great grandfather and I can go back to my 10th great grandfather and no more Thomas', at least not in the direct line. 

Now William would be a different matter  and I suspect that Numerals may not work!

[James1950]

I am number 7 in a line of James.

My father used to talk about Jim, Old Jim and Young Jim. My dad was young Jims son