How to Use Naming Patterns in Ancestry Research

How to use nicknames and naming patterns in ancestry research.

As I started researching historical records to help build individual and family profiles, I began noticing naming patterns and names that would reoccur from generation to generation. I remember seeing one family in Germany during the 1700s where four male children were named Georg, including the father. I noticed that the first three male children had died within two years of birth when I looked closer. The fourth male child lived. Two more males were born in the family; one was named Albert and the other Johannes. It appeared that the father wanted a son to carry his name, which was rather odd to me, as I looked at the family unit through my 21st-century eyes.

As I looked at different generations, I noticed the same practice where the firstborn child would carry the father’s or grandfather’s name. Thus the name Georg was passed on through 5 generations. That experience led me to learn more about family naming patterns and nicknames.

Table of Contents

How to Use Family Naming Patterns in Genealogy

As you search for an individual or family, one of the clues to help identify related individuals is when you see the same names used again and again. Many cultures have long made it a practice to honor their elders by naming their children after them. Just when one suggests that you can find a family based on a naming pattern, that’s when your family won’t follow the pattern. You will, however, see names of parents and grandparents, siblings, aunts, and uncles repeated, but not in any strict order. While over half of the names in a family will probably appear to be repeated, there always seems to be a few different ones. A child might be named after a good friend or a famous hero of the time.

In Western Europe, there were three ways of acquiring a surname:

Occupation—Names that are derived from trades and occupations—primarily found in towns. Occupational surnames are self-explanatory: Taylor (tailor), Baxter (baker), and Cooper (barrel maker). Some prominent occupational names aren’t what they may seem, however. A Farmer did not work in agriculture, but collected taxes and Banker is not an occupational surname at all, meaning “dweller on a hillside.”
Locality—Surnames representing localities are easy to spot if they come from a specific geographical area or part of the land: Marsh, Middleton, Sidney, or Ireland, for example. The evolution of language from other localities is less obvious: Cullen (“back of the river”) and Dunlop (“muddy hill”).
Nickname—Names could refer to color or size (White, Black, Small, Little). Nicknames are perhaps the fascinating surnames—but not always very flattering to one’s family. Gotobed, for example, stemmed from someone who was very lazy, and Kennedy is Gaelic for “ugly head.”

As a general rule of thumb, the following naming patterns were used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (Check your ethnic group for variations.)

Male

First son: named for his paternal grandfather.
Second son: named for his maternal grandfather.
Third son: named after father or father’s paternal grandfather.
Fourth son: named after father’s oldest brother or mother’s paternal grandfather.
Fifth son: named after mother’s eldest brother or father’s maternal grandfather.
Sixth son: named after father’s second oldest brother or for mother’s maternal grandfather.

Female

First daughter: named for maternal grandmother.
Second daughter: named for her paternal grandmother.
Third daughter: named after mother or for mother’s maternal grandmother.
Fourth daughter: named after mother’s oldest sister or for father’s paternal grandmother.
Fifth daughter: named after father’s eldest sister or for mother’s paternal grandmother.
Sixth daughter: named after mother’s second oldest sister or for father’s paternal grandmother.

The following is an example of the Scotch-Irish naming patterns. Click on the image to view detail.

Notes:

There were all sorts of variations with people being what they are, some covered by rules and family decisions.
It was customary to name the next daughter or son born within a second marriage for the deceased husband or wife.
If a father died before his child was born, the child was often named for him if a mother died in childbirth; that child, if a girl, was usually named for the mother.
Another child was commonly named for a child who had died within the family.
Searching for the origins of immigrant individuals is among the most challenging yet rewarding research I have conducted as a researcher. It requires an eye for detail and the ability to see individuals in the times and seasons in which they lived. As you gain the skills to conduct this research, you will manage with confidence your ancestral research.

Finding Nicknames in Historical Record Research

As a researcher, you will regularly find family members who use their birth name, nickname, initials, and variations thereof in all your research documents. For example, my father was named James Schreiber. Still, to his friends, he was referred to as “Flip,” which was listed in his obituary, news articles, gravestone, correspondence, and other records. If I didn’t know my dad and the story behind the nickname, I would have had difficulty associating the two names as one individual. Every one of my dad’s brothers had nicknames they used as their first name. I regularly used these nicknames throughout life long association with them. I didn’t know their real names until I was into my adult years. Their names were:

Uncle Wimp (Arthur Schreiber)
Uncle Bob (Robert Schreiber)
Uncle Giggs (Lawrence Schreiber)
Uncle Kent/Ken/Stu (Kent Schreiber)

My uncle Wimp was named after the Popeye cartoon character Wimpy because he liked to eat many hamburgers. My dad was named after an emotional hippo cartoon Fripolina because he was always whining like a child. At least those were the stories I was told.

Nicknames can give us real difficulty, especially when trying to establish the actual size of the family, connect an individual (s) through the census, or even associate different records to the same person.

Common names can have a variety of nicknames, for example:

Katherine with nicknames Kate, Kathy, Katie, Katy, Kay, Kit, Kitty
Michael with nicknames Micah, Michl, Mick, Mickey, Micky, Mike, Mischa

Nicknames were tricky for me as a beginning researcher and historian. Fanny Schreiber (Frances Schreiber) and Polly Jones (Mary Jones) gave me difficulty figuring out who they were. Once I realized that people were using nicknames, I started searching for nicknames and their associated birth names to better associate the right person with the proper documents in the same generation.

I have found it common for nicknames can be formed from the beginning and endings of words such as

Aggy from names starting “Ag”
Ed from names starting with “Edd”
Essy from names starting with “Es”
Field from names ending with “Field”
Issy from names ending with “Is”
Lee from names starting with “Le”
Lena from names ending with “Leen, Lima”
Lina from names ending with “Lena, Lina”`
Lynn from names ending with “Lene, Lina, Lyn”

I have prepared four lists that focus on associating nicknames with proper names to assist in document research. The lists include hundreds of names from the last 200 years. The lists are not inclusive but will give you an excellent start to decipher names given to individuals by their family, friends and associates. Articles include: