Names - fascinating, frustrating but essential
Names are very important to family historians. It is fair to say that without names our hobby would be impossible. Until we are subjected to barcoding, microchipping or some other technological tracking mechanism; names will remain central to our understanding of the family tree.
But we do have a love-hate relationship with names that are re-used. A name that is passed down through the generations my guide you to the correct distant ancestor in a parish register but it can also cause you to confuse records for fathers and sons or even cousins with the same names. It becomes even worse when we encounter unrelated people with the same name because it was apparently fashionable at the time of their birth. Would it have been so difficult for the Welsh to have come up with a few more names so that not every second child was John or Jane? |