On family names

During a recent trip to England and Scotland, my daughters and I kept running across things named for a St. Margaret.  Chapels, streets, universities--Margarets were everywhere.  We noticed because my oldest daughter is Margaret, named for my mother.  There are several Margarets in our family tree, so inadvertently we have continued that family name.

We have some names that have been passed down, like Oscar, Llewellyn, Jean, and Richard.  But when we first started getting interested in our genealogy, a cousin sent us a family tree that included some other cool names: Dency, Avery, Caleb, Mercy.  Unfortunately for my sister Betsy, Mom and Dad didn't know there was a Betsy Ann that she could have been named for, before she got saddled with the middle name Lou.

My grandfather Oscar used to call all his granddaughters "Bridget" even though none of us were named that.  There are Bridgets in my mom's line, but we have to go back really far in Dad's to find a Bridget.  I don't know why Grandpa picked that name, but it makes me smile every time I think of it.

As I dig into our ancestry, more cool names pop up, most of them for females.  Some of them make me wonder what was going on that a particular name is popular.  "Freelove" and "Azubah" are tops on that list.  We have a bunch of Freeloves in our tree, curiously.  There's also Dimmis, Olney, Waity, Robe, Elnathan, Tryntje, Emmetje, Celitje, Gryet, Femmetje, Aeltje, Honour, Patience, Thankful, Damaris, Mehitable, Lavina, Obedience, Isabel, and Mena.  We have our fair share of Susannahs, Hannahs, Elizabeths, Sarahs, and Marys.  Lots of men named John, William, Thomas, Amos, Benjamin, James.

One of these days I'll do a first name study on our tree to see how fashions change with first names, and how typical naming patterns (like naming the first son for the grandfather, second son for the father, and so on) do or don't appear in our family.  Interesting stuff.  I still want to know where Freelove came from!