Mother-daughter? I’ve seen a few rare cases of the kid given mom’s middle name, but naming a female child directly after their mother seems extremely rare.
All of the kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty, that ruled Egypt from 305–30 BC had the given name Ptolemy, and most of the queens (both consorts and sovereigns in their own right) were called Cleopatra. The famous Cleopatra (the one with the asp), the last ruler of the dynasty, was actually Cleopatra VII, and for part of her reign she reigned jointly with her brother/husband (yes, the Ptolemy’s were very kinky) Ptolemy XIII.
It makes the history of the period very confusing, especially as they did not actually number themselves (that is just something later historians have done to try to keep track of things).
It could happen in Portugal, where people get “firstname, maternal lastname, paternal lastname”. The paternal lastname would change, but it would be a similar situation to those Jesuses Cristo [second-lastname] I mentioned before, you could get an uninterrupted string of Amalias Rodrigues [insert second lastname here].
Not as rare as you might think. My mother is an Edna, and so was her mother. In turn her father was an Edward. I know a woman who is a third generation Bernie.
In my observation, this business of adding Sr, Jr, III, IV and so forth to family names is, and always has been, exclusive to the US (and possibly Canada?).
Post-nominal letters in the rest of the English-speaking world are used only for monarchs. (And, in that context, they don’t indicate descent. Elizabeth II is not a descendant of the previous Queen Elizabeth; she’s just the second queen to use the regnal name “Elizabeth”.)
In the UK (and, so far as I know, the rest of the English-speaking world outside the US and possibly Canada) if a father called, say, Henry Jones has a son called Henry Jones then some other way has to be found to distinguish the son. Most commonly, he’ll use a variant of the name, like Harry, or he will use a nickname, or be ordinarily known by his middle name - i.e., if christened Henry John Jones, he will be known socially as John Jones.
And note that this problem arises whether or not he has the same middle name as his father. Middle names/middle initials are not commonly used, so Henry John Jones would usually be known as Henry Jones, and his son Henry Peter Jones is going to have to find some way to avoid being confused with his father.
the only first-hand I have is my my great gfather naming a son jr. but the son died after one day so when they had another son they didn’t know whether it was jr. or II. oh well…
By coincidence, a line with seven consecutive Barbaras was posted at a genealogical message board recently. Can anyone improve on that for same-named mother-daughter chain?
The purpose of that post wasn’t the consecutive Barbaras but just, I think, the long purely female chain from the 14th century to the present.
There are pure-male (father-son) chains extending to the present and back to the 11th or 10th century, or even 9th century (to Rurik of Novgorad), 4th century (to Niall Naoighiallach),or BC (to Confucius), but all-female lines are harder to come by.
It used to be pretty much standard practice, though, as period literature shows: Sir Thomas Bertram’s eldest son is Thomas in Mansfield Park, the eponymous Nicholas Nickleby’s father’s first name was also Nicholas, and so on.
BTW, among Scots it is common to name a first son after his paternal grandfather. This often leads to alternating chains.
For example, the 7th Earl of Argyll was Archibald Campbell, son of Colin(*), son of Archibald, son of Colin, son of Archibald, son of Colin, son of Archibald, grandson of Colin, son of Archibald, son of Colin, grandson of Colin.
(* - this Colin had an older brother Archibald, but that Archibald may not be an exception: he had a (possibly older) bastard half-brother named … Colin!)
William Howard Taft’s middle name is from the Howard family that settled in colonial Massachusetts. The Howard middle name has survived to this day, my brother and his son both carrying it.
My great-grandfather’s name has gone down my cousin’s line. My great-uncle was Jr., my first cousin once removed (whom we call Uncle Bill, although that is technically not correct) is III, my second cousin (Uncle Bill’s son) is IV, his son is V, and his son will be VI.
It’s interesting that in America the possession of a generation number (what’s the gerund for this process, anyway?) is associated with class.
I learned that first in Gilligan’s Island.