I'd just like comments on this please....I've been researching this family with the help of all the great people here & something has struck me. People are helping me on the various "location" boards, so it would only be a duplication of work to do lookups etc, but this is a general question about naming patterns....maybe Jewish naming patterns (husband Jewish/wife not)
I've got Lyon & William Asher emigrating from Germany to Nottingham sometime between 1788 & 1815, working together & living cheek by jowl. To be honest, I don't know if they are 2 separate people (almost certainly brothers) or if it's one person who used the name William at first & then changed to using the name Lyon. But it looks as though they were "married" (can't find any weddings) to the same woman.. the first .2 children are registered with the father's name as William & the rest have the father's name as Lyon (all baptised in Nottingham) So maybe William & Lyon were the same person, maybe something happened to William (haven't been able to find a death as yet or him being anywhere after 1818 ) & Lyon took over responsibility for his widow & children.
The first child was named after his mother's brother & father ( a combination of names),....assuming the father is William who is not the same person as Lyon, the second child is named after William's brother, Lyon....& possibly their father (the child is named Samuel Lyon...don't know the name of William/Lyon's father)....the third child (officially Lyon's first...so maybe after William had died) is named Alfred Bradley & the rest of the children have Jewish/Biblical names (Abraham etc etc)
What strikes me is that none of the sons have a William in their name. The only 2 reasons I could think of for that (apart from Just One Of Those Things) would be that William was an adopted English name which wasn't really liked/was resented (plenty of immigrant Ashers are called William, but Lyon's children have strikingly Jewish names...apart from Alfred...so maybe he was a staunch traditionalist) or that William had abandoned his family, leaving Lyon to pick up the pieces & they didn't want reminding of him....but that seems unlikely to me.
So I'm wondering if I should be looking for a son named William, who was born elsewhere than in Nottingham & had left Nottingham before the 1841 census .
What do you think, chaps ....a nice lie down & a cup of tea to check my fevered speculation ?
