Anyone have grandparents who gave two separate kids the same name?

[greatauntoftriplets]

I learned today that my mother's parents named not one, but two, of their sons, John. It was also the father's name.

My Uncle Johnnie was born in 1894 and lived until 1962. My sister and I knew that there was a small child and a baby or two buried in the family plot. We are having a new marker installed because the old one is almost 100 years old and unreadable. According to the cemetery records, there was a second son named John, but with a different middle initial, and who died in 1911 at age 2. Since Johnnie I was alive, well and 15 years old at the time, this has totally caused my sister and I to say :wtf: And there is a single baby buried there, who has no name...just Baby Surname.

We also had been told that there was a boy buried there called Edward, who died at age 4 (we are not certain of the year). The cemetery has no record of him in their office. I do know that he died in a typhoid epidemic, so perhaps the cemetery records were not kept well at that time because of the numbers that died.

Anybody else have this in their family?

[City Lights]

1. Yup.

One of my dad's sisters died when she was 7. My grandma had a baby girl the next month and named her after her dead sister. Only difference is they used the name they picked out before daughter #1 died as a middle name. :wtf: I've always thought it was creepy.

[greatauntoftriplets]

2. That makes more sense than this situation...

since the first John was alive and well for many years after the second John's brief life. How did your father feel about his sister's name being a rerun?

[CBGLuthier]

4. Was it John Bigbooty?

[greatauntoftriplets]

5. Nope. Not even close.

:shrug:

I am starting to feel related to George Foreman.

[City Lights]

14. He was born after his sister died and never talked much about it.

No one in his family talked much about it. Getting any info at all about her was like pulling teeth, and don't remember talking much to my dad or aunts about it. I remember discussing it with my sisters.

[u4ic]

3. Yes

my paternal grandmother lost her first born, Michael at a couple of months of age, then named her 3rd surviving son the same name.

[azmouse]

6. My husband's aunt

had a daughter named Mary Ann that died soon after birth. When she had another girl about a year later she named her Mary Ellen.
The names are way too similiar. It seems like pushing your luck. I be afraid to use a similiar name to a child that died.

[greatauntoftriplets]

7. In this case, though, they had two sons named John at the same time.

Plain weird.

[Gormy Cuss]

8. Yes, but with different middle names unless the older child had died.

Before the 20th century when many babies died it was quite common to see the same names repeated after a child died, and in some ethnicities with many Roman Catholics it's common to see all the girls with the first name Mary or variants. Mary Theresa, Mary Frances, Mary Catherine, etc.

The lack of a record of a child's burial in a cemetery is not unusual during that time. My grandfather had six siblings who died as children and only one appears in the cemetery records (he died at age 9) but all were buried in the "Angel's Row" of the local Catholic cemetery. The unnamed were infants who died within days or months of birth.

[greatauntoftriplets]

11. That's what we figured about the cemetery records...

In this case, one was John P. (for Pierre) and the other was John B (don't know what the name was).

Interestingly, the family is now on its 5th generation of John Pierre's, and I know that John V plans to give the same name to his son should he have one.

[brentspeak]

9. The ex-heavyweight boxer George Foreman named all his sons "George"

George I, George II, etc.

[Critters2]

10. And not because any had died

There's an ego!

[greatauntoftriplets]

12. But it was the second John in my family who died...

not the first.

:shrug:

[Critters2]

13. Yep

That's just wierd.

[greatauntoftriplets]

19. It is very odd...

and there is no one left that we can ask. My mother was the last of her generation, except for one cousin in Luxembourg who barely recognizes her daughters anymore.

[Xipe Totec]

15. It is not uncommon

That's why the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez has so many characters named Jose Arcadio Buendia.

In my own family, there are so many Jose Antonios, that I have to compare not just parents but grandparents to keep them apart. Even then, there are the cases of two and even three children having the exact same name from the exact same parents (the already discussed case of reusing the names of deceased children). Fortunately, that custom seems to have gone out of fashion in the 19th century.

[greatauntoftriplets]

16. In my case, one was born in the 19th century and one in the 20th...

And they were alive at the same time. My family is currently on the fifth generation of John Pierre...and I suppose that one day there with be a sixth.

[City Lights]

17. I just thought of something else.

My 7th grade Science teacher had five daughters all named Mary. They all had different middle names. :crazy:

[greatauntoftriplets]

18. I knew someone in grade school who was one of six Marys...

Mary Ellen, Mary Kate, Mary Beth, Mary Margaret, etc. Maybe my grandparents did some of that with John, except my other uncle who lived to adulthood was named Felix and called Phil.

[City Lights]

20. My husband and his sister are named the male/female versions

of the same name, but they are not twins. Personally, I think it's odd.

[zanne]

21. My husband used the wrong name for 28 years.

He's one of nine boys. All his life, he went by the name Paul, middle name Roger. When we got married he went to the town hall for his birth certificate and it states that his name is Jacques, middle name Raymond. His brother, Raymond, checked his birth certificate and found out that HIS first name is Paul. My husband was the youngest; I think my mother-in-law was so tired by that time, she thought "What the heck--Paul's a good name".

[greatauntoftriplets]

22. Now that's funny.

Does he still go by the name Paul?

Your poor mother-in-law. I grew up with families like that, though I was one of two.

[zanne]

23. He still uses the name Paul.

I like to call him Jacques, though.

[ikojo]

24. My grandparents didn't do that but my mom basically did

My two oldest sisters have the same name...

Jeannie is the oldest and the kid that came 11 months after her was named Jeanette, which if I understand French (which I do not) means "little or small" Jean.

For approximately two weeks out of the year they are the same age.

For the record, my mom had seven kids in ten years.



OUCH!!!

[greatauntoftriplets]

25. I have a friend who had six kids in about the same time frame.

Then had her tubes tied, and then got divorced. When she remarried (happily), she regretted not being able to have more kids. Yikes! They are either pregnant or nursing virtually nonstop for years and years. Just thinking about it makes me tired.

[ikojo]

26. Even without me or my youngest brother having kids,

my mom has 15 grandkids...

Bro 1 had two
Sis 1 had three
Sis 2 had two
Sis 3 had three
Bro 2 had five: two by his first wife
one came with his second wife but he adopted him
two by his second wife
I had none
Bro 3 had none.


Wow!!! My mom and dad may not have been responsible in the number of kids they brought into the world but at least my siblings didn't have a litter. In my 30s I thought I'd adopt but given that I don't even make $40k I probably would not qualify and I don't think that's enough to raise a kid on, even though I know many struggle to do so.

[greatauntoftriplets]

28. So far, my friend only has 5 grandchildren.

But only three of her kids have married so far.

[undeterred]

27. My parents had a child that died at 4 days old

and they gave my living brother, who was born 3 years later, the exact same name.

They didn't tell him this, and when he found the birth certificate he was weirded out.

[China_cat]

29. Yeah, we're missing my grandfather's twin sister

who we didn't even know existed until after he died, trying to figure out why his mother was buried back in HER family plot (the family she was born into) instead of the one she married into and a lot of other things.

During typhoid epidemics in a lot of communities victims were buried in a communal grave with a lot of quicklime to try to stop the spread. These communal graves were rarely marked.

[greatauntoftriplets]

30. Thanks, I wondered about that.

This was in the City of Chicago. Maybe Edward was just memorialized on the monument even though he wasn't there physically.

[liontamer]

31. no but it's super common in south america

I've met two people from families where all the girls are named maria.

[MorningGlow]

32. Two pairs, neither one a result of death

My dad was named John and he had a brother named Jack. And my uncle (through marriage) was named Francis and had a sister named Frances (Frank and Fran). Were there fewer names to choose from 80 years ago? Or were they economizing during the Depression? (I keed...love my family, even their weirdnesses.)

On edit: Clarity

[greatauntoftriplets]

33. Thanks. This weirded my sister and I out...

because we didn't know. The older John was always called Johnnie (up until his death in his late 60s). Maybe they intended to call the younger one Jack.

My father was also John and always called Jack. I have a niece who is not yet married and wants to have a son so she can name him Jack in honor of my father and an uncle on her father's side of the family.