Let’s Play Ancestral Name Detective!

First names, like eye color, tend to run in families.

In my (ex) brother-in-law’s family, every first son is James, every second son is John. It has been like that for generations. He broke the tradition by a hair, naming his first son John. James will have to wait for esteemed son number two.

My sister tossed on our own family naming tradition by adding a middle name for baby John that is old-fashioned and multi-syllabic: Chauncey, which is the name of our great-great grandfather.

Chauncey is also a name that is typical for my family. Given names for us tend to be a mouthful: Theodore. Cynthia. Thaddeus. Justine. Florence. Priscilla. Abigail. Frances.

In all 2,101 ancestors I’ve come up with so far, our most common female name is Mary. There are 112 of them, which still leaves 1,989 who are not named Mary. That makes for a lot of unique names.Baby_Ruth_Cleveland

Of course, each generation seeks its own naming trends,whether we’re talking the 1980s or the 1480s.

Every one of my 16 Abigails are from the 16- and 1700s, except one 1800s.

Sometimes these generational naming trends fight family traditions for naming supremacy.

And so somewhere right now 2014’s trending “Joshua” is bumping a favorite family name off the birth certificate. Just as the name “Ashley” did a few years ago.

And the way “Ruth” spiked from 66th to fifth most popular girl’s name after the birth of the hauntingly beautiful “Baby Ruth,” daughter of President Grover Cleveland, in 1891.

But does every family have names as odd as mine?

Look through my ancestors and you’ll find Aleonore, Amabil, Ansfred, Apollonia, Apollos, Augustine, and Avelina. And Benoni, Beriah, Biggett, Bishop, and Bran. That doesn’t even exhaust odd names from the A’s and B’s!

Sherlock Holmes hatOf course, they probably weren’t odd for the time, and that’s where it helps to put on your best Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat and play Ancestral Name Detective.

You can sometimes guess in what era an ancestor was born, or the circumstances of an ancestor’s birth, just by the their name.

My eighth great grandfather was Benoni Gardiner. That odd name is a clue that his mother might have died in childbirth, which she probably did, as her year of death is also his birth year.

It didn’t take me much Googling to find that Benoni is a name that had special meaning in early New England families. It comes from a passage in Genesis on the death of Rachel, wife of Jacob:

And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Benoni: but his father called him Benjamin.

Pilgrim kidsIt’s no trick at all to know that my ancestors, Silence Brown, Delight Kent, Mindwell Osborne, Temperance Stewart, and Thankful Clapp were all named in the trendy Puritan practice of choosing virtues as children’s names.

And with a name like Henry de Pomeroy, you can bet my 21st great grandfather lived in 11th or 12th century England, which he did.

But I admit I was thrown by my 18th great grandmother, Ethel May Dyer, who was born in 1320 England, not the early 20th century American Midwest.

You can learn a lot about history, too, when researching ancestral names.

Walter Giffard, my 23th great grandfather, was born in 1040 in Normandy. I figured he must have palled around with William the Conqueror, because next we see him he’s been installed as Earl of Buckingham after William won the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and parked his throne in England. Bayeux tapestry.GIF

Sure enough, a little Googling proved my hunch was right. (Don’t be too impressed. The Battle of Hastings in 1066 is one of the few historical dates I remember from school.)

At first ol’ Norman-named Walter was surrounded by people with weird Anglo-Saxon names like Cyneweard, and his friends Godric, Aelfwine, Godgivu , Aethelred, and Deorwine.

William and his Norman crowd brought their refined, wine-drinking names with them, and the not-so-sore-losing conquerees soon discovered that they liked both the culture and the names of the conquorers better.Bayeux tapestry 2.GIF

That’s why your neighbors are probably William instead of Wigberht, John instead of Eoforhild, or Susan instead of Swidhun.

It’s also the reason there are, statistically, 60 Michaels to every Hector, and 57 Johns to every Stuart.

Because the pool of popular children’s names shrank after the Norman invasion.

Instead of the Anglo-Saxon baby name book that would have been hundreds of pages long, parents would have had more of a pamphlet to go through now.

To put it another way, if you went out to meet a group of ten friends in England in about 1300, the group would have, statistically, two Johns, two Matildas, at least one William and Isabella, and either a Thomas, Bartholomew, Cecilia, or Catherine for the others.

Naming became so uncreative in England, in fact, that there were sometimes several children with the same names in one family.

800px-Family_Saying_Grace_Anthonius_Claeissins_c_1585Like a family noted in the History of Parish Registers, which reads:

“One John Barker had three sons named John Barker, and two daughters named Margaret Barker.”

I just hope they didn’t all look alike too.

It got confusing real fast. Thus the surname became a thing.

For a while, last names kept to the knitting. If you read King Edward IV’s accounting books from 1480, you would see IOUs made out to:

John Poyntmaker, for pointing of xl. Dozen points of silk pointed with agelettes of laton.

To a laborer called Rychard Gardyner working in the gardyne.

To Alice Shapster for making and washing xxiiii. Sherts, and xxiiii. Stomachers.

But they started running into a problem of duplicates, so someone got smart and extended the roster of names by adding “son” (in whatever appropriate language) to the ends of given names.

PeacockThen someone else started in on adjectives, like Short, Little, Red, or White.

Then they started putting their creative muscle into it and got Longfellow, Blackbeard, Stern, and Peacock (“vanity, vanity, all is vanity”).

You probably don’t know anyone named “Crooked Nose,” but maybe you know a Cameron, which is Gaelic for the same.

And you probably don’t know an “Ugly Head,” but I bet you know its Gaelic version, Kennedy.

You probably do know what the name Williamson means. But I bet you didn’t know that William is German for Desire Helmet.

It’s fun to play ancestral name detective, though it can be frustrating. But if you’re hitting brick walls that you need to find a way around, put on your deerstalker hat and think like Sherlock. You might be surprised at how well it works.

Least Popular Baby Names for 2014

My seventh great grandmother was Fear Brewster, daughter of Elder William Brewster of Mayflower fame. Puritan girl.GIF

Fear’s siblings were named Love, Wrestling, Patience, and Jonathan.

Jonathan was apparently named before the Brewsters got their hands on the Geneva Bible, which became the primary Bible translation used by the Puritans (and Shakespeare).

For some reason the Puritans decided it would be a good idea to tag their children by the Bible’s translated names. This is why More-Fruit and Hate-Evil were trendy names in the 1600s.

Where did these names come from, you ask? Why, from the back pages of the Geneva Bible, where there was a handy list of names that appear in the Old Testament, along with their English translations.

I presume that Mr. and Mrs. Brewster then did what so many others did in naming their baby Puritans. They turned to the back of their Bible and ran down the list. Puritan charcoal drawing

They could have named their beautiful baby girl, Eschew-Evil, as a fellow Puritan did. But they decided their precious dumpling would be better named, “Fear.”

It was a totally appropriate name. Really.

Not because she was a devilish newborn, though.

In fact, it really had nothing at all to do with the child that would carry this advertisement for her whole life.

The commonly told story of how Fear got her name is that she was born during a time when the Puritans were holding secret religious meetings in Nottinghamshire, England.

Since the Puritan faith was essentially outlawed by English law, its practitioners could be arrested and tried if found out.

Thus, Fear got her name from her parents’ anxiety over getting busted by the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Kind of a bummer moniker, if you ask me.Pretty Puritan.GIF

Fear’s brother, Wrestling, didn’t have it quite so bad.

Wrestling is a translation of Jabbok, and does not come with the ominous presumptions that Fear does.

In comparison to either of those, though, Patience and Love had it easy.

As a matter of fact, all four of them had it easy compared to their fellow Puritan children, More-Fruit, Faint-Not, or, horribly, No-Merit or Sorry-for-Sin.

Or, for that matter, my mother, Ruth, whose name translates to Drunk, according to “Hitchcock’s New and Complete Analysis of the Holy Bible.” She does like the little hot toddy now and then, come to think of it, even at 93.

But Drunk? I think not. (And besides, the Hebrew translation means “Friend,” which is much preferable as a name, I think.)

If you’re having a baby, and think it would be neat to have a Biblical name that’s translated from its original language, here are a few suggestions, from Professor Hitchcock’s 1869 list:

Dust (Ophrah)
Perfection (Salma)
Little (Paul)
Sheep (Rachel)
Asked of God (Samuel)Elizabeth Freake
No Glory (Ichabod)
Trouble (Jabez)
Building Me (Bunni)
Confession (Judith)
Gift of God (Nathaniel)
The Father’s Joy (Abigail)
Dunghill (Dimonah)
Rebellion (Miriam)
Iniquity of Trouble (Beth-aven)
Devoted to Destruction (Hermon)
A Dog, or A Crow, or A Basket (Caleb)
Who Becomes Bitter (Martha)
House of Affliction (Bethany)
Father of a Great Multitude (Abraham)
Mountain of Strength (Aaron)

You can find Hitchcock’s Biblical Names and their Meanings here.Salem Puritan.GIF The list is a 58-page searchable pdf with many hundreds of names.

Or, there’s a more conveniently searchable list, along with more detailed information on name origins, here.

Take a minute to scan it and maybe you’ll find your perfect baby name.

I don’t recommend Fear, though.

My seventh great-grandmother Fear Brewster Allerton died early.

Possibly of fright.