Has anyone ever run across a historical journal or diary where the writer is talking about baby names? I guess I really want to know if people in the past talked about baby names like we do. It would be interesting to read about their concerns for names of the day.
I got to thinking about this because I ran across the name Smeda twice in my family tree. What I really want to know is why two couples distantly and long ago related to me thought Smeda would be a good name for a baby girl. What were the thoughts? Who got to name her? Where did they run across that name? Etc.
Not quite historical, but I’ve read tons of ethnographies that include sections on naming. Some go back to the 1950’s and 60’s, but those are really the oldest. It’s fascinating to see how other cultures name, though- many have really wild traditions! The Yanomamo of Venezuela and [name]Brazil[/name], for example, consider it a great disrespect to use an adult’s given name. Instead, they are called ______'s mother or ______'s brother. After death, the person’s name is never said aloud again. The !Kung of the Kalahari don’t choose their children’s names, but instead follow a traditional system of kinship. The eldest son is named after his paternal grandfather, second son after the maternal grandfather, then after uncles and so on. The same happens with girls and their female relatives. Your name actually has a lot to do with your linguistic and cultural relationship with others, and two people with the same name enjoy a close relationship because of it. Parents don’t choose their child’s name, they follow the system. I doubt it would even occur to these parents to NOT name their child after the proper birth-order relative.
I know that this was also a tradition in [name]England[/name] back along, and probably in other countries too.
I’ve never come across anything older than the 60s but through doing genealogy I’ve come to the conclusion that most of my ancestors and people in the same area named their children in three ways: A) after other family members/close friends B) using names from the bible or C) after famous people of the day. They weren’t very original I’m the same as you though! I’d love to know what they were thinking when their little 'uns came along- or if they even cared as much as many of us do today?!
My family is Catholic, and they had to choose the name of a saint. My grandmother loved the name [name]Eileen[/name], but it wasn’t the name of a saint, so when my mother was baptized they lied to the priest about her name!
So Penguin… they lied to the priest and told him [name]Eileen[/name] was the name of a saint, or they lied to the priest and said they named her something else?
CharlieandPerry - I’ve seen the same pattern in my genealogy, though I would add a 4th category of “pulled out of the air and made up”
[name]Daisy[/name] - I didn’t even think of books about other cultures, though I do remember reading some in college that touched on naming traditions. Too far back for me to remember now. It seems like the Yanomamo would run out of names and the Kung would give the same names over and over. I’m glad we don’t have strict traditions like that. I like variety!
Lol. I think the priest would have known that [name]Eileen[/name] wasn’t a saint. :> They told the priest that her name was [name]Marguerite[/name], which was my grandmother’s name. I don’t think they planned it out in advance. In those days, they baptized right away, so my grandmother was still in the hospital, and my grandfather had to come up with something quick. :>
My bet is people didn’t give it the same kind of thought as is generally given today. Traditions were followed much more closely in the past. People were isolated. The baby name book was the family bible.
The Yanomamo don’t have set “names” as in words that are used exclusively for people. They’re named after very specific natural objects or events, such as “smell of rain on tree bark” or “whisker of a small monkey” (those words are a lot shorter in their language.) So they never really run out of names because there are always new inspirations. I also suspect, because their language is non-written and they never utter the name of a deceased person (or even most adults,) that names could be unintentionally reused after 5 or 6 generations, when no living person remembers the real names of their ancestors.
And you’re right, the !Kung do have a lot of repeated names, but they don’t mind. I think there are less than 40 given names for the !Kung, so many people have the same name and most people are known by nicknames that describe a personality trait or physical feature to distinguish them. But even so, individuality is not as valued in their culture as it is in most Western culture. The !Kung live in small bands of relatives, so cooperation and group effort are far more valuable than individuality. Individuality, while not discouraged or frowned upon, is simply not as important. We live in a culture that encourages “standing out” and “personality,” but the !Kung are much more involved in working together as a cohesive unit for the benefit of all in the group. And the naming system isn’t just a tradition, it’s a rule embedded in their culture and language. The name you have literally determines how you speak and relate to other people and is deeply tied to their family system.
My great-grandmother and her twin brother both only had first names, while all their siblings had a first and middle. While there’s no diary or anything to discuss the baby-naming process, the information has been passed down that it was a very difficult pregnancy and birth and their mother may not have had the energy to brainstorm names.
The Bible has passages that mention the naming process of ancient Hebrews (eg., [name]Genesis[/name] 29-30, I [name]Samuel[/name] 1, [name]Luke[/name] 1). Whether these anecdotes are representative of the entire ancient Hebrew culture and its naming practices I honestly cannot say. Most of the children born in the Bible were named specifically by their mothers with no apparent input from the fathers, and their names all seemed to have very specific meanings surrounding the circumstances of their births or the parents’ hopes for the children. (Example: “She named him [name]Samuel[/name], for she said, ‘I asked the [name]Lord[/name] for him.’” I [name]Samuel[/name] 1:20.) [name]Luke[/name] 1 tells of the birth and naming of [name]John[/name] the Baptist, and seems to indicate that by that time only repeated family names were given to sons ("[name]Elizabeth[/name] said, ‘No! His name is [name]John[/name]!’ ‘What?’ they exclaimed. ‘There is no one in all your family by that name.’” [name]Luke[/name] 1:60-61). Apart from that, I don’t know any other tidbits of naming history. I too would love to know where some early Americans got their creative name ideas. I have a whole list of old graveyard names that I have never heard of (like Capitolia?), my favorite being a name I’ve seen in SEVERAL different cemeteries but cannot find any information on ANYWHERE: Monema (“mo-NEE-muh”??). Apparently “Monema” is a genus of moths found in [name]Asia[/name], but how on earth did American families in the late 1800s in my backwoods corner of the country know that??
I can tell you as a longtime name nerd (and I’m sure [name]Linda[/name] had the same experience) that pre-internet, if you had an interest in something like baby names you just could not connect with enough like-minded people to have this kind of discussion. My family thought my interest in names was weird and my friends did not share it, so who else was I going to talk with, and how?
Talking about names in the way people do on Nameberry was something [name]Linda[/name] and I shared that led to the creation of our first book Beyond [name]Jennifer[/name] & [name]Jason[/name], which reflected how WE talked about names and thought about names but not how most people did and certainly not how they were thought and talked about in other books. We were the first, for instance, to collect celebrity baby names and to theorize that these might influence larger name trends; in fact, we were the first to publicly discuss and identify and predict name trends. And it was more difficult in 1988 to quantify the use of names as there were no public Social Security baby name records!
I’ve noticed from my family and many others that there was once a definite trend towards naming for historic/recent leaders and using their full names as first and middles (example, in one generation there were brothers [name]Benjamin[/name] [name]Franklin[/name], [name]George[/name] [name]Washington[/name], and [name]Winfield[/name] [name]Scott[/name]) so I do wonder if they sat around and thought about which people to name after, chose more for the sound than the person, or just chose ones that were particularly in vogue.
I have a Master’s in [name]History[/name], which is relatively rare for doctors, so every now and again I write up a brief article on a history of medicine topic. This entails reading old medical journals from the 19th century (nothing earlier is readily available). Back then medical writing was much more lively, much more colloquial, and much more anecdotal (half the articles are of the ‘interesting case, let me tell you how I managed it’ variety). Since nearly all physicians delivered babies back then, obstetrics was a very frequent topic of conversation, and very occasionally the writer would remark on the name selected for the child. There is significant bias in these reports as the names were only ever commented upon either for being unusual or for being relevant to the medical anecdote, but it is something. I do remember one from the 1870s where the mother was adamant that she would christen the baby [name]Jack[/name] “as I will call him [name]Jackie[/name]” rather than [name]John[/name], which the doctor found extraordinarily odd.
I’m the same as you though! I’d love to know what they were thinking when their little 'uns came along- or if they even cared as much as many of us do today?!