In an earlier message Tom Howle wrote:

> Can anyone provide me with information on the naming patterns frequently =
> used for children in the 17th and 18th centuries in Virginia?  I think I =
> have seen something on this list before, but I don't have it, on first =
> males being named after a certain relative, second males being named =
> after a certain relative, etc., and the same sort of pattern for =
> females.

Six years ago I posted an article on this subject to this list. I've
studied onomastics at Oxford and have examined hundreds (probably
thousands by now) of parish registers and colonial records.

PLEASE NOTE that it is very important to distinguish what period and
what religion or ethnicity you are talking about. English settlers in
colonial Virginia generally followed Anglican England practices up
until the Revolution and then diverged. After the Revolution you begin
to see children named for prominent non-relatives; before it I have
never seen an authenticated case of that naming practice.

Here's the 1996 article. Surnames are in all caps.

Paul Richard Matthews wrote:

Many of my Va. ancestors named their sons William, James, John, and
George in the 18th century as many other families did. I've assumed
that this was done in honor of the monarchy. Is that assumption true?
Is the use of those names any indication of Royal heritage?

Also, I've read that the naming tradition, for that time, was for a
father to name his first born son after himself or his father. This
seems to hold true in the Matthews/Mathews/Mathis family. Is it then a
good assumption, if you have a subject with no known father, that
subject's first born son will normally bear the given name of the
subject's father if the son is not named after the subject?

One more question, in the 18th century did most people have only one
given name, or were two given names popular then also?

---

William, James, John, and George were among the most popular English
names in the 17th and 18th c, along with Thomas, Richard, Charles,
Robert, and Henry. In fact, in many regions as many as 90% of boys
bore one of these names (occasionally with a local favorite added).
They have absolutely no connection to royal descent. George gained in
popularity with the Hanover dynasty; it was used, but less frequently,
before George I. Forenames do not seem to be indicators of status in
colonial times (they are today).

Some groups preferred biblical names: Benjamin, Joshua, Jacob, Isaac,
Abraham, Levi, Samuel, Zachariah, etc. The Puritans chose some real
dillies: Love and Wrestling BREWSTER, for instance. There weren't many
Puritans in Virginia.

Don't read too much into family naming practices unless you have quite
a bit of evidence from your particular family or region. Practices
varied by region in both the colonies and England. Probably the most
common pattern was 1st son for paternal grandfather, 2nd son for
maternal grandfather, 3rd son for father or uncle, successive sons for
other male relatives or very occasionally godfathers or friends. This
pattern holds well into the 18th c, after which we see more biblical
names in protestant families and honorifics (naming a child after a
famous unrelated person, particularly political or military) in less
devout ones.

One assumption that is statistically valid is that if you find a set
of brothers who each name a son X, the father of all the brothers is
likely to be named X. If you find an alternating set of father=X,
son=Y, grandson=X over several generations, the odds are good that it
will continue backward and forward (but you can't count on this; the
pattern had to start sometime, and maybe you have the beginning of
it). Keep in mind that you may not know which son was the firstborn;
child mortality was high, and somebody named in a will as "eldest son"
may in fact have been the third or fourth boy born to a family.
Sometimes names of dead children were reused, but often they were not.

In the late 17th c, we see an interesting colonial pattern developing:
women giving their sons their maiden names as forenames, particularly
if the male line had died out. This is the origin of the dozens of
"Travers"es in Virginia (Travers COLSTONs, Travers DOWNMANs, Travers
McCARTYs, Travers TARPLEYs, etc.). We also find girls with family
names as forenames: Wilmoth, Behethland, Million. I am not aware that
this tradition was common in England, although it existed.

Until the middle third of the 18th century, double forenames in
English families were quite rare, and the ones that existed were
usually in honor of a revered ancestor (William Chichester GLASSCOCK,
John Tayloe GRIFFIN, Alice Corbin GRIFFIN). It was more unusual for
men than women to bear two forenames, in my experience. Girls were
often given a grandmother's married name (Alice Corbin was nee
ELTONHEAD, but her granddaughter was Alice Corbin GRIFFIN, not Alice
Eltonhead GRIFFIN).

The custom of giving a child a relative's full name was well
entrenched by 1750 (Apphia Fauntleroy TOMLIN, Charles Barber McCARTY,
Philip Ludwell GRYMES, Francis Lightfoot LEE), but it was not
universal. Often only one child in a family will have two forenames.
By 1800 it was usual to have two forenames, one often a family
surname. Always question a double forename before 1750--you almost
never find an authentic "John Charles" or "William Robert" before the
Revolution in Virginia.

All the foregoing statements are specific to English-heritage
colonists in the South (though I have read an article indicating that
New England practices were similar in the 17th c). Each immigrant
ethnic group had its own peculiarities; the Germans and the French
in particular observed different patterns.

@1996 Kathleen Much
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