A tradition that complicates things

There is a tradition in Europe–and maybe many other areas of the world–that causes a lot of complications for genealogy research. It’s the problem of first names.

Who should we name him/her after?

There is a naming tradition in Germany: First sons are named after the paternal grandfather, second son after the maternal grandfather, third son after the father. For daughters, the order is similar. In the relatively small world of the middle ages, when names were largely taken from biblical stories, there just weren’t a lot of name choices. If there was a tradition in a family, as there was in the early Gottsacker family, of naming males Peter, Joseph, and maybe John, and naming females Marie, Christina, and Anna, children had interesting combinations of names. Also remember that families with lots of children were the rule. So, lots of kids and few names means some interesting first name combinations in the family.

It’s all about males

This isn’t meant to be sexist, but genealogy research largely revolves around males since, until the 20th century, only males carried on the family name. That makes things all the more difficult since the range of possible first names shrinks by one-half when only males are considered.

Is it Peter, Joseph, or Peter Joseph or Joseph Peter?

With the choice of biblical names small, it is very common to see a confusing grouping of names in the same family. There might be a Joseph, a Peter, a Peter Joseph, and Joseph Peter, and then another Peter (because the first one died at a young age), then a Joseph Peter Joseph and then maybe a Peter Joseph John. In our genealogy, one Gottsacker female married a person named Jacob Jacobs. Hmmmm…sure wouldn’t want to be him on the playground at the elementary school I attended!

It’s not all about males…

In trying to unravel all the first name confusion, there are two saviors for someone doing genealogy research: 1) marriage records and 2) the wife’s name. I’ve been living with all the possible combinations of Peter, Joseph, and John in the Gottsacker family for many years and I still get confused. When I want to get things straight, I always look to the wife’s name and I’ve noticed that nearly everyone I’ve corresponded with nearly always includes the wife’s name to make it crystal clear who the male in question is.