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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: landej on Sunday 17 May 15 09:27 BST (UK)
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Has anyone discovered a situation in their past family history where a child is baptized with a particular name and then, sadly, dies and their parents have a subsequent child and give them the same first name? I think I have seen two instances of this recently but its hard to say for certain, it may just be two sets of parents with the same names. I was just wondering if anyone else had found a situation like that. It's always tragic when a child dies and infant mortality rates were so much worse for our ancestors, so it may have been more common in the past. If I was in that unhappy situation, I don't think I could do it - what do other people think?
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It was very common. I have several examples in my family.
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Yes it seems to be very common in my family.
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I have been sidetracked assigning histories to these poor unfortunate children when I have misplaced or misinterpreted dates etc :(
I , like many others , have many instances of double naming. Its more to ensure continuity of paternal/maternal names
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Very common as well in my family.
Cheers
KHP
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Yes, I was looking for my grandmotherīs siblings. I knew they were a family of 10, but kept getting stuck at 8. It was not until I found and read the family headstone that the penny dropped and I realised two names were used twice.
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My husband has the same name as his older sibling who died 18 months before he was born aged just 9 months.He has a different middle name. He had Irish parents and it was a big tradition with them to do that,so there is a child named for each of the grandparents.
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Yes it was very common. It was a matter of pride to keep family names "alive," literally.
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I have a couple who named three of their daughters Rebecca.
Rebecca 1 died before she was a year old.
Rebecca 2, born months after Rebecca 1 died, lived to be 12.
Rebecca 3, born months after Rebecca 2 died, lived to become an adult.
Took me a while to unravel them all :)
STG
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I have one family where four children were named John. All died in infancy, as did their next boy, John William.
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You often find trees where the compiler has not realised that a child died and a later one was given the same name, and it is the life of the second one that they have charted. It is an easy mistake to make, but shows the importance of checking the burial records along side the baptisms.
I have found that one lot in my family made it easier for me, they always gave the children two names, if a child died the next one was given the same names but reversed.
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I was fortunate that my grandfather was the last born in his family and Victorian birth certificates are so good. It gave me the names and ages of his siblings and the fact that James Thomas was born and died before he was born and was named James Arthur. James was his grandfathers name, but it took a while for it to be used.
Similar stories are in other parts of my tree.
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Hi Landje,
I had a couple in my family from as recent as the 1920's.
There are a few other topics on RootsChat, here are a few for you. (I found them by searching "dead sibling" you can spot the ones of interest from the description)
Naming children after a dead sibling
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=642197.0
Sibling with the same Christian name
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=705314.msg5482849#msg5482849
Sarah :)
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You are also likely to find instances, at least I have on more than one occasion, of a man marrying after the death of his first wife, and giving forenames to children born to the second marriage, that are the same forenames of living children from the first marriage.
I assume, despite some obvious confusion it might cause, it is done because the name is of particular importance to the 2nd wife's family line.
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I had my great great grandfather's birth and baptism but couldn't understand why, on later censuses and on his death certificate and headstone, the date was out by 4 years. When I went back and checked I discovered that the birth I had was for his older brother who died when he was a few months old and that my greatx2 grandfather had been given his names.
Like an earlier poster I've also found families where several children have been given the same name as older siblings who died and they in turn have died. I think after a couple I might have considered that name unlucky and called them something else.
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Oh! I didn't think to check if this had been asked before, I'll remember that for next time. I'm new to RootsChat but have to say I'm loving it so far. Lots of very helpful people on here. I think there's a lot of truth in the need to keep a name going. I guess if the sibling with that name had no children then the next in line with children would feel duty-bound to use that name....... or may have used it anyway with the amount of name repetition that went on!
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What Jebber says is quite true - sometimes I've even seen the situation in online trees attached to relatives where they seem to have the older bearer of the name going on and having children etc. - common sense would suggest that with two years between them, look for the death of the earlier one, as he was unlikely to have survived if a younger brother was given the same name, as Groom notes.
Where I've found two children with the same name, it was the result of two second marriages, where both partners had a "John" of almost exactly the same age, born in the same village. As the bride's children immediately, by the next census, adopted the groom's surname, it resulted in confusion, I'm sure, as time went on. In another branch, they seemed to have anticipated this, when a similar thing happened, as after a similar marriage one boy got the middle name of his own mother in addition to the family surname he'd always had, and the other boy used his original surname as a middle name, and both seemed to be punctilious over using the appropriate initials at least on every occasion. Very helpful.
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I also have families naming siblings the same....... simply because they were named after different people who happened to have the same forenames (not through deaths in infancy) ???
I have a family with 3 male siblings (out of 5 children with 1 female)..............
Donald, Donald Allan & Donald ;D
I have my Grandmother Maggy-Jane (sic) with siblings (out of 7) Margaret & Margaret with 2 brothers thankfully with middle names Donald John & Donald Alexander :P
Another with 2 Catherine's but why not give the subsequent ones middle names ???
This was done a lot on the Scottish islands.
Anne Marie
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Care must be taken as there is an instance in my husband's tree where the older child did not die and so there were two sons with the name Thomas. In their father's Will he refers to "Thomas my oldest son" and "Thomas my younger son", whereas his wife in her Will refers to the oldest one as Thomas and the younger one as "Thomas junior". I know that they are full brothers and not half brothers.
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Yes, I've a few instances of this in my tree also . I know of a certain Utah family that have 3 Thomas's all living , father son and stepson ! must get confusing when all are together at reunions etc !!!!
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In an older thread on this topic I'm SURE someone had multiple instance
of siblings that literally HAD the same name, when the older sibling was still
alive and well.
So you can assume that a later sibling with the same name
implies the death of the older sibling, (and it is likely and common)
but you can't be sure.
BugBear
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Genealogy is difficult enough without our forbears playing tricks on us like that!
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I've also come across this numerous times...I also have one line (in c.1870s) that kept using the name of a deceased son and none of the new children ever survived beyond infancy.
If I recall correctly too I'm sure the Russian imperial family had certain names that were reused amoungst the family and none of the children who had this name ever lasted long.
(I'm thinking it was Alexandria but don't quote me lol).
Lisa
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I have 2 by the name of Thomas born a year apart and same place of birth. Took me about a year to work out they were cousins ;D (Dad's were brothers)
Carol
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... then you get the family of George Foreman, who likes his first name so much that he has named all five of his boys George, and there's a Georgetta too!
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Took me a bit of time to sort out my great great grandparent's German family, as they all seemed to either be called Maria or had Maria as a second name. Someone said this may have been names given to them at the time of baptism.
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... then you get the family of George Foreman, who likes his first name so much that he has named all five of his boys George, and there's a Georgetta too!
I remember being told of a family where all the children had their own Christian name and then Dads Christian name and surname. After he died they hyphenated their names so instead of being for example Alice Fred Jones or Peter Fred Jones they became Alice Fred-Jones or Peter Fred-Jones. (Not real names)
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I came across a Hungarian family in the 19th century who (out of 12 children) had 5 daughters named Maria who died in infancy before the 6th one survived to adulthood. They also had 3 sons named Mihaly, with only the 3rd surviving past infancy. This seems fairly common at this time, especially with high infant mortality.
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When I started family history I discovered that 2 of my uncles and 2 of my aunts were named after their paternal grandparents. In each case the elder child given the name died young. The girls were known by 2 versions of their official name and the 2nd boy had an unofficial middle name.