Maybe I have too much time on my hands. One of the projects I was working on this week involved finding the ancestry of my dad’s best friend, Cleve Henry. One of my middle names — Cleve — is after this guy. He and my dad were cowboys together in the glory days of their youth. Then they married sisters. Then they divorced the sisters. By the time I was born Cleve counted still as...
I wonder sometimes. Genealogists are supposed to use the earliest attested name. The rule is often glossed as requiring genealogists to use the “birth name“. We had a debate on Geni.com a while back about the name of Jesus. I still don’t feel comfortable with the result. The Messianic Jews argued stridently in favor of Hebraicizing his name. The Christians argued just as...
More from Tony Proctor on the problem of names in genealogy.
Scandinavians didn’t use hereditary surnames in most cases until about 1900. Their customs would surprise many Americans. The following information was adapted from a posting to the Norrbotten mailing list by Gwen Boyer Björkman.Because Swedish soldiers typically came from rural backgrounds, they often used patronymics. These names might be very common, such as Andersson, Eriksson, Olsson or...
“Sancho Panza by name is my own self, if I was not changed in my cradle.” — Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), Don Quixote Name Choice “Name Choice Freedom is not a new concept; it’s just that few people exercise or realize that they have such freedom. The result is that nearly every woman gives up her name at marriage and nearly every child is given the...