So, I was reading some stuff on FDR, and saw that he had a son, which he named Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., in 1909. He later died as an infant about 8 months later.
Then, in 1914, FDR had another son, which he named Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. I find this insanely bizzare. Some searching on the (odd to me) practice here has revealed frankly no mention of this fact…not even the Wikipedia article on the surviving FDR Jr.
Is this or was this a somewhat common way to do things? I can imagine reserving the Jr for a surviving son if one was stillborn or something, but the first kid was alive and kicking for the better part of a year. I’m sure they had a burial and funeral and such. I would imagine that in most situations, the next 1914 FDR Jr. should have been FDR III, but that moniker went to the 1914 FDR Jr’s son.
Also, does anyone know why they chose to re-use the name of one of their previous children? The only other time I can think of that this happened was with the multiple George Foremans…but that was just extreme vanity…and even they go by George Jr, III, IV, V, VI.
There appear to have been different ‘rules’ in the early 20th, especially among upper-crust families. The Gilbreths had a daughter whose name was Lillian Moller Gilbreth Jr.
Of course, having a highly distinguished mother was unusual in those days.
I’ve heard of other cases where a child is named after a deceased sibling. I would think as far as Juniors go it would have been common in the past when infant mortality rates were higher. It doesn’t seem that unusual to me, it’s naming someone after a deceased relative, in this case just a sibling. It’s certainly not like George Foreman’s kids, all named George.
It’s in the wikipedia article. It’s at the end of the first paragraph under Personal Life. Admittedly it could be made a bit more clear but it’s been in there at least since 2011 (I didn’t look further back than that).
[QUOTE=wikipedia]
A brother of the same name had died in infancy in November 1909, having lived only several months.
It was pretty much standard in 18th and 19th century Norway to name kids after their grandparents and reuse the names when one of those kids died. Which of course is not terribly relevant to the case of FDR, but it’s information on the topic in general.
The Jeffersons had Lucy Elizabeth I and Lucy Elizabeth II. Lucy I lived 6 months. Lucy II was born a year after Lucy I’s death and lived 2.5 years.
John Tyler had two sons named John and two sons named Robert, among many other children. In this case, the repeats were with different wives and their lives overlapped. The ones with the second wife went by other names to avoid confusion, though there was probably little confusion anyway because they were born decades apart.
[I know these things because my daughter is obsessed with US presidents. She pointed these out in a book about first children last night.]
Yeah, I wouldn’t view it as odd had FDR Jr (2) just been named FDR…but the fact they still considered him a Jr. is odd to me. I would think he’d be III, since his older, deceased brother was already the Jr.
But, it is interesting to know that it was moderately common.
I think it might have been seen as “incorrect” - FDR’s child would NEVER be a “third”; that would have to come only in a succeeding or parallel generation. Maybe giving a second child the same name as a deceased predecessor is the unusual part, but once past that, naming the second child Junior is correct on the generational-naming level.
Had a cousin or sibling had a child with the same name after the first one, and certainly after the second one, it would have been correct to name them FDR III.
A Jr. doesn’t seem odd to me. He’s the namesake of his father, and if a sibling has passed away another could take that place. The father-to-son chain of names would be expected to continue. Depending on who you ask, Jr. becomes Sr. on the death of his father, and his son III becomes Jr., so the suffix is ordinal. The reuse of the name for a sibling is no odder that reusing the name between father and son.
We could add versioning to the system, the first son could be Jr.I, the second Jr.II, etc., resulting in something like III.V being the uncle of IV.I.III. The big problem is the ordinal shift each time someone dies.
On a similar note, Paul Revere had two daughters named Mary with his first wife, and three sons named John with his second wife (none of them were alive at the same time as their same-named siblings, though).
Yes, if you do it like real versioning and don’t make the subscripts ordinal. But doing that and starting from Adam and Eve everyone’s name will be incredibly long. On the other hand, everybody will be totally confused so it won’t matter. I think we should stick with the current way of doing it.
It may also have also been an acceptable turn-of-the-century way to “forget” the death of the earlier child. By giving the name to another child one can almost conflate the infancy of both, so that only the memory of the child’s death (and not the entirety of his short life) needs to be put out of mind. It sounds cruel and insensitive now, but that sort of attitude was probably a psychological necessity when infant mortality was more common.
One method for naming is that when the “Sr” dies, everyone moves up a step. So a Jr would be “promoted” to Sr and a III becomes a Jr. The names supposedly are to disambiguate among the living, not those who are already dead. But it can lead to lots of confusion if someone becomes famous with a particular name.
It gets tougher when one of your names is Junior. Junior can be a first name, or last name. You could end up with a Junior Junior Jr. who becomes Junior Junior Sr. upon the death of his father. Or he could just call himself Senior Senior Sr.
Gone with the Wind mentions that Scarlett O’Hara’s family cemetery had three headstones for her brothers who all died in infancy, each bearing the name “Gerald O’Hara, Jr.” Of course, that’s fiction, but as other posters have attested, the naming convention it referenced did really exist.
As Elmer notes, it was not at all uncommon for children to die in infancy back in the old days, making it somewhat impractical to permanently “retire” a cherished name if the child who bore it died.
Ironically FDR jr. nearly died in college from a sinus infection. He received a new drug called sulfa that saved him. Sulfa was a very early antibiotic.
