Every family has their popular names - names that appear generation after generation regardless of fashion. There
were, of course, always fads among names - copying that of the current
Monarch and their family, for example, as well as using a traditional name
common amongst ancestors.
Naming
patterns were also frequent in many families, although they are by no
means a reliable way of predicting the names of children.
Traditionally, the first son would be named for the paternal
grandfather, the second son for the maternal grandfather and the third
son for the father. For females, the first daughter would be named for
the maternal grandmother, the second daughter for the paternal
grandmother and the third daughter for the mother. Providing, of
course, these names were not the same.
Then,
there are the families that seemed to delight in using unusual names
for their children, and those who followed popular fads. Horatio, for
example, made a brief surge in popularity after Nelson's victory at
Trafalgar. Similarly, Adolf disappeared from German communities after
World War 2.
In the 1700s the top five names for each gender were :
Boys - John, William, Thomas, Richard and James
Girls - Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane
In the 1800s the top five names for each gender were :
Boys - John, William, James, George and Charles
Girls - Mary, Anna, Emma, Elizabeth and Margaret
There was also the tendency, unusual as it may seem to us today, of reusing the name of a child who had died. In the 1700's and 1800's this occurs frequently in my family tree, with the name of a child who has died in infancy being reused for the next child of the same gender born to the family.
This can make research quite tricky, especially when a popular name has been used by several branches of a family. In my Irish Mulholland family, for example, four brothers all named their first son James, after their father. One child died at 2 days old and the name was reused 18 months later. This meant there were five children named James Mulholland, born within five years and a few miles of each other. Sorting out which records belong with which child is quite a challenge.
Then two of them married women named Mary.
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