Same Names.....over and over and over...

At some point in my genealogy journey I came to a realization, and then developed a theory to go along with said realization.

           .....there were only about 10 names in use at any one time, 5 for men and 5 for women.  I am convinced there was a board of names somewhere and they chose the names for that current generation.  This went on until the mid 20th Century when lots of people bought radios and TV's and started wanting to be unique....

I first started noticing this when I was working on my Dads side of the family who were Germans from Russia aka Volga Germans.  I searched for a 'village list' at the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (AHSGR) I got the list and started looking for my relatives.  There were hundreds of people listed but aside from a few outliers, these were what I found-
The men were;
Johann
Georg
Conrad
Frederich
Heinrich

And for the ladies;
Anna
Maria
Margaretha
Katarina/Catherine
Elizabeth

Within a 200 year period there were only 5 men and women who were not sharing these names!  I think I can be forgiven for thinking it was a conspiracy, ages in the making!

I would look at a family and see combinations of these names, sometimes more than once in the same family.  Corresponding with other Volga German family trackers I found that it was common to use the name of a child that had died on the next child born of the appropriate gender.  That can get real confusing, I have seen a name used for 3 different children in the same family with only the youngest living beyond childhood.  There were families with all of the children of each gender having the same first names with different middle names, reminding me of George Foreman!

Thinking this was just some German aberration, I moved on to my mothers side of the family.  there had been some work done on this side before by a cousin, so I was trying to add to what she had, working on the early Americans.  John, James, William, Henry, Samuel...I'm not kidding!  The ladies  were the same - Sarah, Elizabeth, Mary, Jane, Catherine.  This became something of a joke when I shared with my family.

Then I noticed other naming trends.  Desperate souls trying to break out of the mold.  In the time of the "Great Awakening" (1730 - 1777) everyone had a biblical name, Sarah Hannah, Matthew, Jonathon, Solomon, Abraham and Moses.  Some were even more obscure - Abiathar; yes it's in the Bible.  In the deep south, in my husbands family there was a well educated family with money, a whole generation of cousins named Flavius, Octavius and Maximus!  The Fathers/brothers were all doctors and obviously studied Greek and Latin. (I always wondered what their wives thought!)

The oddball naming conventions taught me some lessons:
- Check the birth dates  - we have all seen the family tree online that has the mother born after the child.
- If there are Biblical names I look for a local church to see if there are records.
- As with the roman names, something unusual warrants closer examination.
- When I find a trend, I check to see if it is a cultural thing or a family thing.

Of course we have gotten past these sorts of names and trends - My brother and I for instance are Kathryn (Catherine) and Shawn (John).......ahem!