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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Milliepede on Saturday 04 February 17 16:06 GMT (UK)
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I found a Herodia on 1841 census who was a sister of my great great grandfather. She later turns into Rhoddy or the less unusual Rhoda.
She had a little boy called Shelley which I thought was most unusual. I first thought it was after the poet but seeing as they were "mark with an X" doubt they would have been reading and enjoying his work.
I then realised not far away is a village called Shelley so wonder if he was called after that but I suppose the poet is more likely?
Anyway do these names help us today? I thought a name like Herodia surely couldn't have been plucked from the air and there must have been a previous one but not found it yet!
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I have never heard of it before...I wonder if it had anything to do with "Herod" ...the female version? ;D
Carol
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It was transcribed if I remember right as "Hervelia" which didn't help ;D but did read Herodia and yes you are right it was Herod related!
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My great grandmother and her sister both had very unusual/distinctive names.... which were then spelt in a variety of ways, making searches wide and not tight.
BOTH of them moved 10 miles to the nearest town and both dropped their first names and were married using only their middle names - so you'd need to be close to this tree to have discovered that.. others who searched for them might have them down as "disappeared".
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In Suffolk and Essex it seems to be more of a trend to name children after the maiden surname of the mother, or a family surname, such as there is a Newman Jacques in my family tree. Mmn Newman.
I have a Bush Stock in my Essex tree. Never been able to find the marriage of the parents Thomas and Ann but Bush could be a clue.
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I thought Hephzibah would be helpful in my mother's tree; however; 15 instances of the name in 2 generations soon finished that idea. However, in my father's tree an Osmund b1599 in Teffont Wilts; has to be the same guy who appeared in Blandford Forum 1641, specially with the unusual surname, Luffman.
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I have never heard of it before...I wonder if it had anything to do with "Herod" ...the female version? ;D
Carol
Herodia, probably derived from Herodias who, according to the Gospels told her daughter Salome to ask Herod for the head of John the Baptist.
Simon
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One branch of my family used "Valentine" as a favourite name, and all the people with the combination of that and the not-uncommon surname have proved to be related.
On the other hand, most of my lot seem to have been fixated on the most common given names. The village where many of them lived seemed to have been stuffed full of girls called Ellen, and they ensured that the following generation was provided for.
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Less common names seem to have about a trillion variants though, always a catch.
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Jonas has been useful in my line. Even though the family of Jonas changed their name from Broadley to Bradley in the 1750s, leaving their brothers as Broadley, the name of Jonas helped me follow the Bradley line forward through all the other unrelated Bradleys. It helped me get back from John Broadley of Church, Lancs 1660-1733 (sons Abraham, Jonas, John) to his father Abraham of Darwen, Lancs (sons Abraham, Jonas, John). Even before the Y-DNA project which took us back to Halifax in Yorkshire, George Redmonds' book Christian names in local and family history, told me that Jonas was a highly unusual name which came from Halifax. I had checked the Blackburn registers for several years either side of 1654 and found no other Jonas and only half a dozen Abrahams. Having got back to Warley, I found Abraham 1632 son of Jonas and Jonas, 1588 son of Robert. Unfortunately, he was the first Jonas. I am now faced with 3 Roberts of Northowram all born about the same time in the 1560s. I am very grateful to Jonas! cb
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... Even though the family of Jonas changed their name from Broadley to Bradley in the 1750s, leaving their brothers as Broadley, the name of Jonas helped me follow the Bradley line forward through all the other unrelated Bradleys.
It can be misleading to suggest that a family name was consciously 'changed' in the mid-18th century. At that time literacy was almost exclusively with the clergy and a small number of other educated people, and spellings were not standardised. Unless families kept their own written records, church rites were almost the only time their names were written. That would depend on how their accent was interpreted by a cleric, and how he would choose to write it. Maybe something on the spectrum Broad > Brahd > Brad was a bit of a challenge.
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... Even though the family of Jonas changed their name from Broadley to Bradley in the 1750s, leaving their brothers as Broadley, the name of Jonas helped me follow the Bradley line forward through all the other unrelated Bradleys.
It can be misleading to suggest that a family name was consciously 'changed' in the mid-18th century. At that time literacy was almost exclusively with the clergy and a small number of other educated people, and spellings were not standardised. Unless families kept their own written records, church rites were almost the only time their names were written. That would depend on how their accent was interpreted by a cleric, and how he would choose to write it. Maybe something on the spectrum Broad > Brahd > Brad was a bit of a challenge.
In this case, Andrew Tarr,there is evidence in a letter possessed by a descendant of this branch of the family that it was done deliberately. John Broadley, a Methodist minister, 1803-73, disagreed with his family changing the spelling, saying they had "Miss Nancyfied it". He kept the original spelling and so did his descendants, but his brothers became Bradley. He said he had seen his grandfather's gravestone in Church, Lancs (no longer there) which had Jonas as Broadley.cb
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In this case, Andrew Tarr,there is evidence in a letter possessed by a descendant of this branch of the family that it was done deliberately. John Broadley, a Methodist minister, 1803-73, disagreed with his family changing the spelling, saying they had "Miss Nancyfied it". He kept the original spelling and so did his descendants, but his brothers became Bradley. He said he had seen his grandfather's gravestone in Church, Lancs (no longer there) which had Jonas as Broadley.
If I interpret you correctly, you have moved into the next century, when literacy was increasing and many names had 'settled down'. I guess more people were noticing differences and responding to them?
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Not a Christian name but one line added the surname Miller as a middle name over several generations making them easier to research.
Carol
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In Suffolk and Essex it seems to be more of a trend to name children after the maiden surname of the mother, or a family surname, such as there is a Newman Jacques in my family tree. Mmn Newman.
My Suffolk ancestors also used to follow this trend from time to time, giving the boys the mothers' maiden names as Christian names. This would have been fine, except that the surname was Pearle...
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... Even though the family of Jonas changed their name from Broadley to Bradley in the 1750s, leaving their brothers as Broadley, the name of Jonas helped me follow the Bradley line forward through all the other unrelated Bradleys.
It can be misleading to suggest that a family name was consciously 'changed' in the mid-18th century. At that time literacy was almost exclusively with the clergy and a small number of other educated people, and spellings were not standardised. Unless families kept their own written records, church rites were almost the only time their names were written. That would depend on how their accent was interpreted by a cleric, and how he would choose to write it. Maybe something on the spectrum Broad > Brahd > Brad was a bit of a challenge.
I can speak from experience of having an unusual name, even if you spell your name out or give someone a piece of paper on which you've written your name, people will still spell it wrong. I've had so many forms and emails returned to me over the years in which people have spelt my name wrong even though it's in black and white infront of them. In my case it's partly the fault of certain fonts in which an uppercase I and a lowercase l are indistinguishable. Some other cases appear to have arisen from the name being read out across a noisy room, that's the only way I can account for once being named on a list as Mona, unless it was a rather cruel and only partly justified comment on my character. ;)
Like other posters I haven't had many unusual first names but I do find that many of my relatives helpfully kept mothers maiden names which makes it much easier to trace them.
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My lot seemed to have stuck to very common first names which they use various combinations of in each generation. Can make your head spin trying to keep them straight. Only one line used the maiden name of the mother as a middle name which made it somewhat easier to track down subsequent generations.
And in one paternal line there are different spellings of the surname which can be misleading.
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I have ancestors with the first names Israel and Barnabas. They've been so much easier to trace than the many Johns and Marys on my other branches. The names were passed down through a few generations so it's been easier to trace those lines.
Unusual names are great, but the downside is that they're often mis-spelled - the earlier you get, the weirder the spelling seems to be! And sometimes it's hard to guess what the pet form of their name might have been (to use Millipede's example, if I'd found a Rhoddy in my tree I wouldn't have guessed it came from Herodia!)
It's good to have a slightly less common name, e.g. a Samuel, Benjamin or Robert, rather than yet another John or William. I'm currently working on a couple called Philip and Hester/Esther, which is useful because their surname was Jones. :)
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I'm pretty sure that most of the Howcroft families in the Bolton area are related, but most of them head back to ancestors called James in the first half of the 18th century.
There are, however, at least 3 James baptisms in the right time frame, along with a couple who died in childhood.
My branch has Ralph and Hermon in that period, and they link me back to a Ralph Howcroft who fought in the Civil War. ;D
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I think I have made a breakthrough with the Lorkin Wallaker, his mother was Margaret Wallaker nee Rand and his gran (Margaret's mum) was Hannah Lorkin, born 1713 in Little Cornard, Suffolk. I am just getting more info to verify this. The likelihood of being related to Babs Windsor is high as there is a Golding line from Cavendish/Glemsford where her ones were.
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To answer the question posed in the topic title my answer would be very much yes. I have three unusual first names in my tree, namely Chancellor, Attiwell and Farrer. The first originated in Lanarkshire, probably from the surname of the landed family in the parish of Libberton. All my Attiwells and Farrers are from Northumberland and Durham. I found that just doing a search using these first names was of great value (as you get a perfectly manageable number of hits) and came to the conclusion that the vast majority, if not all, were connected.
William
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So long as the numbers remain low. Believe me 25 Hephzibahs are just as bad as 25 Williams to research.On my mother's side I have virtually the entire cast of the old testament!
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I have an unusual name which recurs in my Martindale line ... Tamer.
When I first came upon this name (Harriet Tamer Martindale) I assumed that it was after the river which forms the county boundary between Devon and Kernow (and, indeed, it is sometimes spelled Tamar in the records) and that it indicated a West Country link. But no such link exists.
The Martindale name is a geographical surname, originating from the village of Martindale, just to the east of Ullswater, and all Martindales eventually trace back to there. My Martindales were in London, and I have yet to identify the migrant. The line has, however, dried up and I suspect my current research subject MAY have been the migrant.
And that's when I made the remarkable discovery ... that there were a LOT of people called Tamer in the Lakeland village of Holm Cultram. AND there were Martindales in Holm Cultram. Including a Tamer Martindale.
It looks remarkably like I may have found the correct line for further research here! I have not yet managed to establish the link ... but I am hopeful that it is there just waiting to be proved.
So yes ... an unusual name is proving very helpful here ...
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I think Tamar is a Biblical name.
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I think Tamar is a Biblical name.
If so, then it's one that my lot missed :o
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Tamar/Tamer seems to have been quite popular in Cumberland. I have several in the Whitehaven area, but none in other counties.
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I believe I have an ancestor called Fortune Wright (nee Kirk), I have no idea where that name comes from! I know that surnames can sometimes become first names but I have never seen this happen with a female before. Looking through the baptism register for Cotgrave there is actually quite a few Fortune's baptised, I wonder if they are all named after one person (and probably all descended from the individual) or if it was a name doing the rounds in late 1600's Nottinghamshire.
As I said, I believe she is my ancestor as I am descended from a Thomas Wright who was born in the 1720's at Wysall, Nottinghamshire. There are two entries in the register one in 1724 (the son of Edmund and Fortune) and one in 1726 (the son of Charles and Mary). As Thomas named a daughter Fortune and a son Edmund I think it is safe to say that my Thomas was born 1724!
As for a male name, I do have a Justus Bosward from Warwickshire. It's a good job he had an unusual name as well, his baptism was entered as Justus Boswell.
And as for the most unusual name I have come across during my research (and not been related), I always remember finding a marriage in Birmingham for a Shropshire Newbrook.
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There have been fashions for first names which are "qualities". I believe that this was popular with Puritans. Some of these, such as Grace, have survived, but many others have fallen by the wayside.
I've just checked one I remember seeing and expecting to be extinct, and FreeBMD mentions a "Silence" as late as 1943.
I think that name smacks of the desperation of parents who have been kept awake by previous children.
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I found a child named Jubilee in my family - born in 1887, Victoria's golden jubilee year. I hoped she would be easy to trace, since she had a common surname. But alas, Jubilee appears to have been a nickname, and though it appears on the 1891 census, her birth is recorded as plain old Elizabeth.
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I found a 'Lide'... every other sibling and parent had a typical English name except hers. I saw a few alternate spellings. I thought it was short for "Lydia" until I saw it on every original document.