Pat:

The variant names you list are derived from at least 3 different Bible
names:  Josiah the king, Hosea the prophet, and Joseph the slave in
Egypt.  Each of these names has different meanings in the original language
(Hebrew).

Josie (male) was a Scottish nickname for Joseph.  Perhaps someone also
applied it to Josiah.

The rest of the variants you have can probably be divided between Josiah
and Hosea.  Josias is the Greek variant of Josiah.

The names Josiah, Hosea, and Joseph were applied to different people in the
Bible.  A rule of thumb is that if they were different people in the Bible,
they were different people in family history.  (Eli was not short for
Elijah, Elisha, Elihu, etc.  Dan was not short for Daniel.)

This does not mean that descendants and others did not get confused and
fail to keep them separated.  I have observed as time went on (into the
1800s) when the time of popularity of such names waned, that strange
variants turn up, even on tombstones.  I think people lost track of the
fact that they were Bible names.  So they were just spelled the way they
sounded to the hearer.

Variant spellings were used in different versions of the Bible.  Hosea and
Josiah in an English Protestant Bible were Osee and Josias respectively in
an English Catholic Bible.

--Ida Skarson McCormick, [log in to unmask], Seattle


>
>   On March 25, 2004, "Patrick Oliver" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>   In my Oliver family research I find these given names appearing
>   repeatedly over several generations in public records such as census,
>   probate, deeds etc: Josias, Josiah, Josier, Josie, Hosea, Hosiah,
>   Osiah, Osy, Ocee, Ocie, Osay. <snip>

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