General Chat

Sometimes it's just that there are two people of the same name baptised at the same place that stops me going further back. That's a pain

Agree with you there, Ed. I have 4 Samuel's all in a line, a handful of Williams, James, George's, all with the same surname, and you're right the daughters were given their mother's names too, so I'm up to my armpits in Florence, Mary and Phoebe's!

Makes sense of David Beckham's decision to give his kids wacky names like Romeo and Brooklyn now, dunnit?!

I have a slightly different problem to a common name - one branch of my tree bred like bloomin' rabbits, making what is a fairly uncommon name very common in one part of the country. They also tended to follow this naming convention for their offspring:

The first-born son was named after the father and the first-born daughter after the mother. Subsequent children were named after their parent's siblings, so cousins wound up with the same name born within a year or two of one another and all of this in a small part of Hertfordshire. Trying to separate the children into the correct families has proved troublesome at times, because I actually have two married couples in the same era with the same first names as well! (As well as three cousins called Walter, three called George, four called Mary, plus a pair of Ernests and Fredericks).

My G x 2 Grandfather had 23 children by two wives (I think he wore the first one out!) Two of his daughters were called Mary - I think they must have run out of names.

Ed

David Williams born in Wales!! I haven't found anything out at all about him - not even any census records.

I didn't think the name Embleton would be so common - but I keep following leads which end up with a totally different name - but they come from the town of Embleton! and yes,every generation has a John and every John married Elizabeth, as well as having a mother, sister, cousin, daughter and niece named Elizabeth - and none of the Elizabeths seem to have had a surname.

omg yessss lol

Smith and Jones !!! ..and Im not going down those branches lol

Mitchell ...getting there :) .......but the unusual ones are just as bad. Salmon aghghhhhh

Then theres the ones with differing spellings........mumbles , mutters pmsl

Yes - one of my fairly common surnames - my dad's family - with spelling variations to boot.

AND to add insult to injury, my grandfather (b.1884) was never registered - nor were any of his siblings. And only two of the children were baptised.

So I still have no idea of my gr grandmother's maiden name. Plus her age varies too much in the census returns for me to be able to find her just by first name and place of birth .... so there is a HUGE gap in the chart and it makes me really really cross!

Mrs Grumpy

Must have wished this on myself by starting this thread. Think I've found what happened to one of my missing ancestors after her husband died. Looks like she married.....wait for it..........













.........a Jones

Is Walker common enough?

i got the opposite problem... so uncommon that they cant spell it,, so it could be anything!!!

I have a Smith, daughter of a Jones, who married a Tayler (often spelled Taylor). Needless to say that part of my tree is rather patchy :))

I have got some Brown's.

I have quite a few rare/unusual nams an the problem there is that nobody knew how to spell them! They are nearly always spelt differently than you expect.

Pat

Thankfully I have some more unusual names, but 2 of these less common surnames are VERY common in the areas where my ancestors lived. I'm busy trying to sort out all the instances incase there's a link.

I have JONES on both sides of my family.... Welsh ones, English ones and English-who-moved-to-Wales ones.

....and as for the DAVIES who married DAVIES ,the JENKINS, and HUMPHRIES, ....well !

Gwyn

No not yet Lesley lol

Everything but actually xx

Same here Lesley ... and all with the common surname here ... John, William Edward Alice etc etc lol

Did you find any that were actually smiths ie blacksmiths etc?

SMITH

From all directions on most blinky branches lol xx

Hill. James Hill.

You can probably tell that his son married a Bond. ;)

I have got the surname Scott in my tree, from the Gateshead/Newcastle area and there are 1000s of them. Its been complicated because both Ancestry and GR sometimes have Newcastle in Durham and Gateshead in Northumberland instead of the other way round. However I have got back to 1740 and considering my lot are all miners, shipbuilders, ag labs and domestic servants - that ain't bad !

I've got loads with really common forenames too, Ann, John, James, AAAHH!!