A Rose (or Sarah, Elizabeth or Emma) by Any Other Name ...

'What's in a name?' asked Juliet.  In some cases quite a lot, it seems.  But this is no Shakespearean exercise.  I've spent a while this week tidying up my family history records.  The job is far from finished but, in the course of it, a particular phenomenon has distracted me into a little statistical research.

Out of the 5,369 names on my database, 171 relate to children who died before their third birthday.  Given the stories we hear of infant mortality in past centuries, this might seem on the low side, but I haven't gone searching for them and it's quite possible that many others have fallen 'between the cracks' as it were, having been born and died between two censuses, and so have escaped my attention entirely.

What specially aroused my curiosity was the number of times that the names of these unfortunates had been re-used for later children born to the same parents.  From this limited population, this appears to have been a particular phenomenon in the 19th century.  Out of the 171 who died, I counted 48 instances where their names had been re-used, 3 in the 18th century and 8 in the 20th, but by far the greater part of them in the 19th century.

Sometimes the exact same name was repeated, but often one or other forename was combined with another name the next time; and it was often a practice that ran in families.  Let me tell you about some of them, beginning with the children of George and Sarah Bowker.  They married in 1840 and named their first child Elizabeth.  She died in 1841 and when their sixth child was born in 1857, they named her Annie Elizabeth; she also died in her first year.  George and Sarah's son John married in 1878 and named his first daughter Sarah Elizabeth.  She, too, died in the year she was born.  John's brother Edward had married four years earlier.  When his seventh child was born in 1885, she was given the name Sarah ... and died the following year.  Two years later another daughter was named Annie Elizabeth; she survived until at least teenage and probably longer.

William and Rebecca Carman married in 1862, three years after William's brother James married Mary Ann. William's first child, Emma Rebecca, was born in 1864 and died the next year.  They named their fourth child Emma in 1871 and she lived until 1878; another daughter was born in 1882 and was duly named Emma.  James's first child, Eliza, was born in 1860 and died in 1862; their sixth child, born in 1875, was also called Eliza.  Eliza's brother Alan married Alice in 1890 and named his second son Allen in 1893.  Allen died when only a few weeks old;  nearly eleven years later Alice gave birth to their ninth child, who was called Alan.

Wiliam and Alice Steggles married in 1890.  Their first child was named after his father, William, but died within weeks.  A year later son no. 2 was also called William.  Eight years and five children later, Gladys was born in 1900, but also lived only a few weeks.  Her sister born the next year received her name ... and lived until 1984.

Finally, I must mention probably the first example of this that I came across.  It concerns the family of my 4xGreat-grandfather, Charles Hurrell, who married Elizabeth in 1780.  Their first daughter was born in 1784 and named Mary; she lived just eighteen months.  Their second daughter arrived in 1787, was named Mary and lived little more than a week.  When their next child was born in the spring of 1789, Charles and Elizabeth were not to be caught out.  Still loyal to the name Mary, this time they added 'Wakefield' - though I have no reason to believe any connection with the Yorkshire town.  Mary Wakefield Hurrell rewarded her parents' perseverance, married, bore a total of nine children and died in 1869.

For good or ill, it would appear, names - like anything else - can be second-hand.