What's in a name?

As far as I know, I'm the first person in my family to be called by my name. I've looked a reasonably long way back, and found no others - though I still may! My daughter also does not have a family name, though she does share a middle name with some of her ancestors.

The same can't be said for a lot of my ancestors. Some names are very popular indeed!

In the tree that I have constructed for my husband's family and my family together, there are 1463 individuals who have first names recorded. There are 255 unique names, though I have grouped names where they are known abbreviations or nicknames (such as Eliza, Elizabeth, Beth, etc)

14 names make up 50% of the people in my tree, with the top two names accounting for around an eighth of all the people!

The distribution of the names in the top 10 is pretty even between the sexes, with four names each being male and female, and two being "unisex" names.

The two most common names in my tree are Mary / Maria and John / Jonathan (with the usual spelling variations that come with these) - both occurring 93 times across the two families. Sticking with either church figures or royalty, the top ten is as follows:

1. Mary / Maria (93)
- John / Jonathan (93)
3. William (85)
4. Elizabeth / Beth / Betsy (70)
5. George / Georgina (60)
6. Sarah (51)
7. Anne and variations (50)
8. Charles / Charlotte (41)
9. Joe / Joel / Joseph (40)
10. Thomas (39)

There are 123 names which occur only once,

If I look at my pedigree, rather than the wider family, I have 110 names in my direct line at this time. The top 3 names, unsurprisingly, are the same, though William comes top. In fact, the top 10 is the same 10 names, and with the exception of William, Mary, John, is in the same order also.

If there was a popular name in my tree that wasn't also a popular name in general then I would find this helpful in my research, but according to this article in the Express John and Mary are the most common names in the UK over the past 500 years. In fact, those lists look a lot like the list from my tree.

I have found some lovely names along the way, though. I'm fond of Lettice (said Let-tish-ah), though I'm not sure I'd name a child of mine Lettice (or Leticia). Lucetta is another lovely one. Ezra, Fidora, and Gervis only occur one time each but I love them too! It seems that creativity with girls' names was a bit more common than with the boys.

I find family naming patterns quite interesting, and even beyond the naming firstborn sons after the father (which is quite common) I also see quite a lot of naming after aunts and uncles. Perhaps one day I'll find the fabled "aunt Jessie" that my Nanna was meant to be named after.