Have you noticed this?

[mother25]

My ancestors seemed to favour naming the first-born for the father/mother, and that was carried on with my grandparents and my parents 
There were a lot of Samuel, John, Charles, Richard for the boys and Sarah, Jane, Emma, Emily for the girls in the 'old days'   
My eldest is Elizabeth and would never answer to anything but her full name. However her hubby started calling her 'Liz' and that is what she's known as now.
I agree that some names can date a person, and I often wonder what someone called Apple will think of her parents when she's 90 years old 

[Gaille]

My ancestors seemed to favour naming the first-born for the father/mother, and that was carried on with my grandparents and my parents 
There were a lot of Samuel, John, Charles, Richard for the boys and Sarah, Jane, Emma, Emily for the girls in the 'old days'   
My eldest is Elizabeth and would never answer to anything but her full name. However her hubby started calling her 'Liz' and that is what she's known as now.
I agree that some names can date a person, and I often wonder what someone called Apple will think of her parents when she's 90 years old 

LOL I hit the 1911 cencus all excited and looking for my Nanas family .............and ended up more confused than when I started!
Gt-grandma had a lot of children, and by 1911 almost all of them had married & had children............All around the same ages  and they all seem to have liked the same names - I had to print them out just to get them all straight in my head, and each 'duplicated' child has had to have his/her parents name next to theirs on my tree programme or  just end up confused!

[wini]

My GG parents had 10 children and must have been short of ideas since they had an Anne and an Annie, a John and a Jonathan, what is worse is that through Census and BMD the Anne and Annie seemed to swap and on one record one of them is Anna. My Mother was Catherine Annie, so I am sure Grandmother was the Annie.

Not only that, the GG grandfather had a cousin with the same name as him ,Peter. Both Peters children had the same names although the cousin only had six chidren. It makes it hard for us poor researchers.

wini

[Deb D]

In my OH's family tree there are multiples of Henry, Isabella, Naomi, Stanley, Herbert ... but my late father-in-law was the ninth of eleven ... and by the time they got to him, I think they must have run out of either names or imagination.

He was baptised Alfred Frederick.  So ... he was Fred Fred. 

[Duck]

My brother and oldest son share the same christian name, Anthony, my son gets very upset if anyone tries to call him Tony and my brother is the same if anyone tries to call him Anthony, he insists on being called Tony 

[Suzy W]

Hi all

Very interesting.

Well I have a few different ways to spell names.  My neice is a Nyomi not Naomi.  Her children Asia Leigh, Madisun not Madison and a Elijah which I think comes from the bible
And thank God my grandmother was a Cecelia, no other member in her family was called this, and this has made record finding for her so easy, even if her name had some strange spelling on some certs.
Just feel sorry for those little one's named after fruit or a day of a week.
What actress named her child Sunday Rose? Sounds like Sunday Roast.

Suzy W

[justmej]

And you can often get a good idea of the age of a person by their name.

Goodness... I hope not ... the earliest date (so far!) that I have found my name appearing in the family was in 1789!

Presently, there are three of us (a cousin once removed and a 1st cousin), who have the same family forename and my 1st cousin and I also share the same middle name!  Our first name was that of my grandmother... who was named after her grandmother... who, surprisingly, was named after her grandmother...

The name seems to have been passed down another branch of G.Grandmother's family too... so there's plenty of us now ... but I'm not telling... 'cos Ruskie might just guess how old I really am!!

justmej

[DozyDora]

My great grandmother didn't want any of her daughters getting nicknames, so she christened them with short names like Ina, Ada and May.  She didn't mind that her sons got nicknames, so they had longer names.

Dora

[LizzieW]

I have a Thomasina in 1557, the 4th child of my 10 x g.grandfather.  I thought it was a modern thing to "feminise" a male name.  Oddly he had two sons who didn't take his name and a daughter before this 4th child.  Neither girls took their mother's name either.

I have an Abigail in 1584 and an Arabella in 1825 - I thought they were modern names.

Incidentally my OH was introduced to the children of someone the other day.  She is called Annabella, but has called her sons Arthur and Frank.  What is it with these middle class people that they have to give their children working class names?

Lizzie