John vs Jonathan, 18th century names [closed]

Question

There are lots of cases where parents will recycle names after children die young, but does anybody have any examples where two children have similar names and there's no evidence of name recycling?

Here's what I've run into: A family that names a son Jonathan and then a few years later names another son John. Both sons appear to have grown up, gotten married and had their own children.

The birth records are here (Jonathan - https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JM8Q-M9M) and here (John - https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:J9JW-J97). Clearly the same parents, in the same town.

John appears to get married in this record - https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPHQ-WXTY

While Jonathan gets married a couple of years later in this record - https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NKZN-XYW

And both go on to have quite a few kids of their own.

I guess I'm trying to figure out how unusual this is for the time period, or even more generally, because I don't remember ever seeing this before. Although I must admit that I'm not an expert in such matters.

Answer 1

Its relatively frequent in earlier days. I suspect it happened less often by the 18th C (just a guess; no evidence). It must have been confusing  Even in your example the names are different 

Famously their were two brothers both  called John Paston https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Paston-83

Heres a will from my own family. Seven sons ; one William is the 2nd son and another William is the youngest son.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Will_of_Richard_Hurste_of_Combe_Oxfordshire%2C_1580

This man had two daughters called Mary. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Browne-1489 

And this one named three sons Jasper (although one died young) https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Miller-1882

I can't find it now but I also transcribed a will with two Johns and two Elizabeths.

edited typos

Comments

I've one family where there was an Elizabeth, and an Eliza, where Eliza was born after Elizabeth, and both of them lived past childhood, both marrying and having children.

I think this was the first time I saw that our ancestors saw them as two separate names, not the same name.

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I think that's what I'm trying to wrap my head around. The idea that they saw John and Jonathan as different names.

Thanks for all these examples, I guess I needed to see it elsewhere, no matter how frequent or rare, just that it actually happened.

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You might also run across families where they have Jonathon and Jonathan alive at the same time, both surviving to marry.

Or families that name all their sons James (as an example), then differentiate them with a second forename  -- and I'm not talking German or other culture where such are common (also not 18th century, but 19th to 20th).  So James, Jimmy, Jack, etc, unless they chose to use their second forename.  So James Michael might be Michael, while James Henry and James Andrew might be Jimmy and Jack.

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Definitely they saw them as two different names.  I have Jonathan ancestors, and they had brothers named John.

The abbreviations for the names were different, and I've seen no evidence that people were confused by this.

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That's because they are both biblical names, and they are different people with different stories.

Could be a similar situation if someone said they were confused by John and Juan or Jean in the same family, they're all the same when translated but they're still different.

Answer 2

It seems fine to me. My ancestors Nicholas and Sarah Danby named two of their daughters Maria and Mary Ann. When Maria died, Mary Ann married her husband!

Answer 3

I have an ancestor who named two daughters Mary and Mary Ann, another who named two sons Joseph and Joseph Francis Charles, and two ancestors who named two sons after themselves; John Wise, of Accomack County, Virginia, and Mareen Duvall, of Anne Arundel County, Maryland (both sets of identically-named sons still living at their father's death and both named in their fathers' respective wills).

Answer 4

I think it’s pretty common.  In some cases I’ve seen more than one wife was involved and I’ve also seen Jonathans who went by “Nathan” so clearly people saw these as different names.

Answer 5

I think it was more common than it appears. I have 2 GGA who were sisters  one is Sarah Jane and the other just Sarah born 1836 and 1838, for a long time the family thought they were the same person.

Then through DNA  a cousin tracked down the descendants of Sarah Jane in Australia and they confirmed the relationships.