[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Naming of godparents

karl roussin kroussin at fidnet.com
Fri Nov 19 13:55:55 PST 2004


  Hello Rose
    The following is a chart of the naming of children in England , and the
custom in Germany is about the same , when I find it , I will send it .
------------------------------------------------
Naming Patterns
You will often see the same names used over and over again in families.
While certain names are popular in different areas in different times in
history, the repetition could represent a pattern. Many cultures believe in
honoring their elders and do so by naming children after them. Angus Baxter
in "In Search of Your British and Irish Roots" describes a pattern that was
popular in England in the 1700-1875 period:

The first son was named after the father's father
The second son was named after the mother's father
The third son was named after the father
The fourth son was named after the father's eldest brother
The first daughter after the mother's mother
The second daughter after the father's mother
The third daughter after the mother
The fourth daughter after the mother's eldest sister
If this pattern would result in a duplication of names - i.e., both
grandfathers had the same name - then they would skip to the next one on the
list. Similar patterns have been suggested for other nationalities. This
could be a very helpful formula, but many genealogists warn against giving
it too much credence. Given human nature, it would be very difficult to
follow exactly. It would be pretty hard to convince a new mother of her
first-born son to name him after a drunken, abusive father-in-law rather
than her own beloved father who had just died.

 Sincerely ;
    Karl Roussin

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rose Ingram" <roseingram at shaw.ca>
To: "GPV Listerserv" <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 1:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Naming of godparents


> Jerry and Karl are correct.  From what I have seen, most of the time there
> is no rhyme or reason that we can see for giving a child a particular
name.
>
> As Karl pointed out, there might be a hint of sibling relationship due to
> names showing up repetitively.  In one of my family lines I confimed a
> sibling relationship in a death record of man, the main witness (finally)
> stating he was a brother.
>
> Rose Ingram
> ======================
>
> From: "Karl Krueger"
> ----snipped---
> > For example, you might find that Gustav A and Heinrich B witness for the
> daughter of Friedrich A, whose wife was Wilhelmine B. Then in another
record
> you might find that Friedrich A and Gottlieb C witness for the son of
Gustav
> A, while in another record Friedrich A and Samuel D witness for the son of
> Heinrich B. Seeing certain names showing up repetitively in this type of
> relationship might be an indication that Gustav and Friedrich were
brothers
> and Heinrich was the brother of Wilhelmine. Of course, many times
witnesses
> and godparents were simply good friends or neighbors of the parents. But
by
> studying an entire town, and looking at who all the residents of the town
> were, you will be surprised how much you can figure out without having the
> "definitive" records to prove that Gustav and Friedrich had the same
> parents.
> >
>
> Jerry Frank  wrote:
>
> It is my opinion that naming practices of any type, in any culture, are
> inconsistent and unreliable for hard core research. They can be used as
> clues for furthering our research but I don't think we should ever say,
for
> example, that an infant is related to a godparent just because the name is
> the same. The relationship should be established through actual b/m/d
> records.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ger-Poland-Volhynia Mailing List hosted by
> Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe http://www.sggee.org
> Mailing list info at http://www.sggee.org/listserv



More information about the Ger-Poland-Volhynia mailing list