We read The Crucible in high school. IIRC, There was a girl named after her mother. Sarah Junior or Ann Junior or something like that.
I’ve done some inputting of names from the 19th century and earlier for Familysearch.org and noticed it wasn’t unusual for mothers and daughters to have the same name. You’d see Elizabeth, daughter of Elizabeth Smith (Elizabeth, Anne, and Catherine were extremely common names back then). They were probably differentiated by nicknames: the mother would be “Elizabeth,” the daughter “Lizzy.”
Lucy Arnaz was named after her mother, Lucile Ball, but to my knowledge she was never called Lucy Jr.
When I was less enlightened re gender issues than I am now, I thought Lucile Ball was a little full of herself to do that but of course never thought the same about my father who named my oldest brother after himself.
I know a Toni Armstong, jr. In her case, jr. is a lesbian, so she knows her name won’t change if she gets married (albeit, she could know that to, just by deciding so if she married a man), but she has gone by Toni Armstrong, jr. since well before there was any SSM anywhere in the US (I met her in 1991, and she had already been using that as her name for a while).
According to my mother, once upon a time, when the pool of names was smaller (before the cre8ive days), and the oldest daughter did often have the same name as her mother in gentile families (in Ashkenazic families, people are not named after living people), but people didn’t need to distinguish between mother Mary Smith, and daughter Mary Smith, because the mother was Mrs. Smith, and the daughter was Miss Smith. At any rate, is was assumed that the daughter would marry some day and change her last name, so she’d be Mary Jones, and there wouldn’t be a problem. Father and son were both Mr. Smith, hence the need for the jr. & sr.
Albeit, in my mother’s time, people were fussier about not calling married women “Mrs. Mary Smith.” She was either “Mary Smith,” or Mrs. John Smith." Still, people used honorifics more often then. Children NEVER called adults by their first names, unless they were honorary aunts, or something (when you called your mother’s unrelated best friend “Aunt Joan”), and adults who didn’t know each other well used honorifics.
Still, I can see where using honorifics more and first names less made mothers and daughters with the same name less confusing.
Lucie Arnaz wasn’t a jr. A jr. would be Lucille Ball jr. Lucie Arnaz has a different first and last name. I don’t know whether Lucille Ball ever used the name Arnaz for anything, but her given name really was Lucille Ball, and her daughter’s given name is Lucie Arnaz. FWIW, they have the same middle name, but they did not have identical names, and that’s required for “jr.” When a man is John Paul Smith, and his son is John James Smith, they are not senior and junior.
I know a family that has several generations of the first son having the father’s name as a middle name, and the maternal grandfather’s name as a first name. Then one time, both grandfathers had the same name (the husband and wife’s fathers both hand the same name). The son ended up being named after a brother of the father who had died young, and never had children of his own.
My own ancestors were from Sweden, and looking back at my family tree it’s very common to see boys named after their fathers and daughters after their mothers, except in their surnames rather than given names. So there was Lars Hanson (Lars, son of Hans) and Lena Gerdsdottir (Lena, daughter of Gerd). I know this isn’t the same thing exactly, and I don’t believe they do it Europe proper anymore, but I still see those kinds of names in Iceland from time to time.
Lillian Moller Gilbreth’s fifth daughter was Lillian Moller Gilbreth Jr.
And Leslie Lynch King Jr., named after his father, was renamed Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., after his stepfather.
Also, the naming procedure in Iceland is different from other places. It is usually patronymic, so Hans Jonson’s son Baldur would be named Baldur Hansson. This us confusing to non-Icelanders, but the natives deal with it without much ado (the telephone book is listed by FIRST name). Nowadays there is another way of doing things. I hereby quote Wikipedia:
"The vast majority of Icelandic surnames carry the name of the father, but occasionally the mother’s name is used: e.g., in cases where the child or mother wishes to end social ties with the biological father. Some women use it as a social statement while others simply choose it as a matter of style.
In all of these cases, the convention is the same: Ólafur, the son of Bryndís, will have the full name of Ólafur Bryndísarson (“the son of Bryndís”). One well-known Icelander with a matronymic name is football player Heiðar Helguson (“Helga’s son”), another is novelist Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir (“Minerva’s daughter”). One medieval example is the poet Eilífr Goðrúnarson (“Goðrún’s son”).
In the Icelandic film Bjarnfreðarson the title character’s name is the subject of some mockery for his having a woman’s name – as Bjarnfreður’s son – not his father’s. In the film this is connected to her radical feminism and shame over his paternity, which form part of the film’s plot.[5] Some people have both a matronymic and a patronymic: for example, Dagur Bergþóruson Eggertsson (“the son of Bergþóra and Eggert”), the current mayor of Reykjavík."
-Larry.
Fans of 1940’s Fox Technicolor musicals may remember Cobina Wright Jr., who was eye candy in 9 films. Her 4 children include “Cobina III (aka C.C.)” per the linked website.
Anyone my age will immediately remember Lada Edmund, Jr., but that seems to have been a stage name.
Cecil’s fount of wisdom ran a bit dry when he offered Elizabeth II as the example in response to “Why are girls named after their mothers not called ‘Junior’?”
Elizabeth II was born 323 years after Elizabeth I died. There are better examples, as the other discussion indicates.
As for most societies not using particular given names in a widespread manner, we have an exception, China. Yes, one country, officially one language and society, but in any case, a very important one.
China is known for its limited range of names, with only a bit over 4000 surnames in use (there are at least 6 million in the US). There are about 93 million people with the surname Wang, 92 million Li, and 88 million Zhang. The most common full name is Zhang Wei, with about 300,000 bearing that name.
And China has a taboo against naming children after their parents.
On the other hand, as far as Google is concerned, there are two people with my name and the other one is my father (first and last, leaving out the middle but that wouldn’t change the results).
I think that was a weak attempt at humour on Cecil’s part, but of course Queen Elizabeth II is named after her mother, the former Queen Elizabeth, wife of George VI.
That makes sense, as Liz II was named, not only before she became queen, but before it was even known that she would become queen.
ETA: And, in fact, before her father and mother even knew that they would become king and queen.
yes, Elizabeth (and Victoria) are popular names among the British royal families, and Elizabeth II may have been named Elizabeth after her mother. But she was not named Elizabeth II until she became the reigning queen. I.e., the numerical appendage is not a consequence of being named after her mother, but of bearing the same name of someone, whom she had no substantial genetic relationship with, who died over 300 years before she was born. (Elizabeth I was the last of the Tudors; James I was great-great-grandson of Henry VII; Mary II was sister of James II; George I (of Hanover) was great-grandson of James I; nine intervening generations of out-marriages to other German nobility, especially Prussians, and we get Elizabeth II)
Her mother was not Queen Elizabeth, she was Queen Consort of George VI. That’s an important difference. Most importantly, there could be no claim to the crown of the nation by relatives of her line of descent who were not also in the line of George VI.
Elizabeth and its variants were extremely popular names at the time among the nobility of Europe north of the Alps and east/north of the Rhine. While it is indeed likely that she was named after her mother, she could very well have been named Elizabeth regardless of her mother’s name. She also could have been named Elizabeth partly because of her mother and partly because of the link to other Elizabeths.
MODERATOR NOTE: There were two threads on the same topic, which I’ve merged. That causes a slight hiccup in the trouser-legs of time, but it’s better if all comments on one column are in one thread.
Well I thought it was funny (and not in the least bit confusing), at least.
Correct: This is no longer done in Scandinavia proper.
It is, however, done in Iceland, as disquod explains.
I’ll add that in the Scandinavian countries, names ending in -dotter or -*datter *(daughter) are very rare. Names ending in -son or -sen, however, are extremely common.
ETA: My sister is named after my mother. No “Jr.” is used, of course; that’s just not done around these parts.
There is a federal judge named Douglas Ginsburg who was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987. His nomination was later withdrawn. I remember from the news stories at the time that his then-wife and daughter were both named Hallee Morgan. According to the news story for the second link below, the mother of his then-wife was also named Hallee Morgan. Furthermore, his daughter by his first wife also took the last name of her mother, although she wasn’t given the same first name. He’s now married to his third wife, but apparently they don’t have any children:
Also, it appear that none of the Hallee Morgans adds Jr., II, III, or anything else to their names.