Reuse name of dead child?

[JAKnighton]

My great grandfather was named after his older brother who died a week after he was born.

Another distant relative reused the name of an older sibling, and his cousin used the name as well.

[OrganicJohn]

I have also come across this several times with my ancestors.It seemed a bit strange to me  at first,morbid even,I don`t know why.It was also a bit confusing .Obviously there could not be two sons with the same name (except for George Foreman!).I have not come across it with daughters.I have also found in a couple of cases the third born son named after the father even having the same middle name.Perhaps the parents had run out of favourite names.

[annaS]

I have a family who had 2 daughters; both died.  The first was born and 1872 and died 1874 and the second born 1875 and died 6 months later.  Although they went on to have more children - including girls - they didn't use the name Priscilla again.  They had 16 children in all!!!

Anna

[a-l]

I also have found this very common amongst both sexes in my families.also name reversals eg if two mary janes died the third became jane mary.

[josey]

Obviously there could not be two sons with the same name (except for George Foreman!)

I found a family on the census in Scotland with 3 sons called Alexander because both grandparents and the father had that name. Presumably the close family had some way of distinguishing them when they called out the name!

Josey

[JAKnighton]

It was also quite common for variations of names or very similar names to be used across several children, I have a family with two sons called Harrison and Harry. Eliza and Elizabeth were commonly used in the same family group.

Also situations where middle names would be switched around, I have one family with three brothers called Ernest John, George Amos, Amos Edward and John Henry.

[Redroger]

Certainly historically; I have many instances of this in the 19th century and earlier. The common practice was for the next child of the same gender to be given the name of its deceased sibling. Clearly this is something of a random process, the quickest re-use I have seen is around 8 weeks after the death of the older sibling; I have also seen a waiting time of over 8 years before another child was born with the same sex as its deceased predeccessor. I also have at least one case in my family where 2 half-siblings born a year apart were baptised with the same name (John). They are both fully documented as living to maturity. This caused me serious doubts about my research, but a few other cases have been reported on this site. My two cases of this were in the border area between Somerset and Dorset. The re-use has been recorded across these counties plus Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire so this practice seems to have been widespread.