At last weeks PGA event in Hawaii the field contained 100 Americans and amongst them were 3 juniors, 1 II and 3 IIIs. I have never met anyone named after their father in England or Australia (except an American student at our high school for one year). In fact I can’t think of any Jrs that are not American.
So I ask:
How common is it or should that be are they?
When/why did it become common?
Do Canadians also shun the practice?
It is pretty common. I am named after my father although we both go by our middle names and our first name was passed down through the earliest American settlers in the 1st Colony at Jamestown usually on a father to son basis. I have the whole family tree so it was a practice in the 1600’s unbroken until now.
That practice of naming Jr. or the II or III is not standardized. It is given by the family. Plenty of fathers name their sons the same name and they don’t get the junior title. For example, the father might be called Tom and the son Tommy (or Big Tommy and Little Tommy with my grandfather and uncle). The variations are endless but it is quite common.
Speaking anecdotally from my mother’s line in this country, her first ancestor from Scotland was here in 1742. His name was David.
There are also four other first cousins named David after our grandfather.
Naming a son after the father was very, very common in the early and mid 20th Century, but probably not quite as common now. Boys who are IIIs are often called “Trey.” Boys who are named after their grandfathers are sometimes referred to as II rather than “Jr.” which designates a son.
Women can also be “Jr.” after their mothers, but this practice is rare.
I had no idea that this wasn’t the custom in other English speaking countries. Thanks for the eye-opening OP!
Well, it’s not strictly an American thing. My husband is a Fifth, (and, unless one of his brothers or sisters swipes his name for their child, he’ll be the last!).
And my UK born step-father, whose mother was from New Zealand, and father was British, was named after his father.
I’m a 4th, but not sure if I’d name a son to be a 5th.
In the 23 most recent tribute notices for men in the Syndey Morning Herald that list children, three of the decedents* had sons named after themselves, or were named after their fathers. That doesn’t sound much different from the ratio you found at the PGA event in Hawaii.
Well Edward Jeffrey’s son was Ned and the older Langley went by Steve not Neville, but point taken. I guess we just don’t tack on junior here and now that I think of it I know two cases where the father is Jack or John and the son the other, so they may all be Johns.
How common is it to name your daughter after yourself? Or should there be another thread for women?
My maternal grandmother’s name was Anna. My mother’s name is Ann. My oldest sister’s name is Ann…
But my sister had all sons… As Melissa Etheridge sang, “The legacy stops here.”
A few hundred years ago, it was usual practice for the first son to be named after his father, and the first daughter to be named after her mother. You’ll see it in Jane Austen novels, for example. (In the Bible, too; everyone wants to call John the Baptist Zachariah after his father and they’re puzzled at the name John because no one in the family is named that.)
I don’t know a lot of people who say, “we’re naming our kid after a parent” --it’s usually that a family name is being passed down. If you’ve got 3 or 4 Davids ahead of you, you want to keep that going. My husband is the 4th X in his line, for example, and offically he’s named after his grandfather.
In our family, we usually had family names at least as middle names, except that my first name is my grandmother’s, and my 3rd brother is named the same as my dad. On the whole it’s been grandparents, and my own daughter’s middle name is the same as my first name because it’s a family name, not because it’s mine. If we’d had a boy, we would have called him after my grandfather–the X would have stopped because it’s not the greatest name ever.
Well, I am a 3rd, with both my first and middle names exactly the same as my father and grandfather. My wife wanted to name our son the 4th, but I put my foot down - this is not a Merovingian dynasty. So we compromised, and my son’s middle name is my first name, if that counts.
My wife is Catholic, so you can’t throw a brick at a family party and not hit a Mary, but that is not quite the same thing.
Regards,
Shodan III
My father and his father had the same first name as me, but we all had different middle names so none of us was a “Junior.” My grandfather seems to have been named after his mother’s father, so the name has been in the family since the 1830s at least. He had an older brother, named after his father, who died in infancy. This side of the family is German/Swiss.
My brother is named after my mother’s father (and that is also my middle name); my mother’s father was named after his grandfather (his father’s father), who was from Ireland. This family name also goes back to the early 1800s. My brother named his oldest son after himself, but they have different middle names. They go by different nicknames based on the same first name.
My mother was named after my father’s sister. Her older sister was named after her mother. My father’s sister was also named after her mother.
There are other “family names” from both the German and the Irish sides of the family that have been re-used and recycled for at least 150 years.
If this thread is any indication, we’re still a heavily patrilineal society. Not to criticize, just make it clear. Other cultures, as in parts of South India, are matrilineal. Perhaps similar patterns are going on among women’s lineage, but no one notices because no one’s paying attention, the same value not being assigned to women’s naming. Are we comfortable with this level of gender inequality? Just askin’.
Well, this is a thread about naming sons, not daughters. I know a heck of a lot of girls with family names, including most of the girls in my and my husband’s family. I don’t think you can conclude that from this thread, johanna.
Another anecdote: My boyfriend’s family, 10th generation (so he sez) Canadians. He’s a III, and I’m guessing will want to continue the tradition.
It’s common enough in Canada, although I’m not sure where you’d go for official stats on that sort of thing. I had a few friends who were “juniors”, but most went by their middle names or used a different nickname : James and Jimmy, Rob and Robert, etc. My father is named for his father, but he’s never referred to as “Jr.”
More often, though, my male friends have their father’s name as their middle name.
My father’s middle name was his mother’s maiden name. He passed it to me, I have passed it to my son.
… I’m a III. My son is going to be born sometime in the next week, he will be a IV. I like my name, my father passed away when I was 15 so I’m naming my son as much after him and my grandfather as myself. However my situation is even a bit more involved because my paternal grandfather’s grandfather also had my first and middle name, and my Mother’s father had the same first and middle name as well. That’s the kind of thing that is really hard to justify stopping, you kinda want to keep it going. :>
Ivyboy is a Jr. Ivylad has the same name as his father, but a different middle initial, so he’s not a Jr.
Of course, it makes for some amusing family conversations. My SIL has called my husband Tommy since they were kids. My son is Little Tommy, despite the fact that he is 16 and is taller than she is. I call my husband Tom and my son is Tommy. At school he insists that he be called Thomas, and gets most irate with me when I vist him at school and call him Tommy in front of his friends and teachers.
Neither of my nephews is named directly for my BIL, but their middle names are, respectively, his first and second names.
My exhusband came from a family where the oldest boy was always named Albert, but the middle name differed, and the men usually went by that. So my BIL was called Mark, for his middle name.