what surname holds the record for continuous same father and son same names?

Question

Lets have some fun, My question is for you all is who do you think contains the most generations with the same father and son names. We all run across this in our research.  I have worked my way through several of these situations in my personal tree, anyone want to toss in a name of someone who was the first in a series of  same name generations?

Answer 1

Let's start off with four generations:

Szent-Györgyi Imre 1784-1862 (Szent-Györgyi-9)
his son: Szent-Györgyi Imre 1827-1901
his son: Szent-Györgyi Imre 1866-1943
his son: Szent-Györgyi Imre 1912-1986

The father of the first was János, not Imre, and the last died without issue, but I think the time coverage is pretty impressive: 202 years in which there was at least one Imre living in the Szent-Györgyi family.

Answer 2

In my family there are 6 father to son generations with the name James Thomson starting with Thomson-8000  who was born about 1807.

Answer 3

All male members of the princely house of Reuss have all been named Heinrich since the 13th century, in honour of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI; the youngest current Heinrich is the 23rd generation in a direct male line of Heinrichs that goes back to Heinrich I von Weida, born c. 1122: https://genealogics.org/getperson.php?personID=I00333162&tree=LEO

Comments

The problem is that the earliest generations kind of fail the "same last name" test, since they don't really have last names - they have titles and locatives and nicknames, not inherited last names. Also, trying to follow the line of descent, I keep hitting dead-ends in the 16th century. Where am I going wrong?

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Start here and work backwards: https://genealogics.org/getperson.php?personID=I00443984&tree=LEO

And "same last name" is an irrelevancy in the case of nobility who technically don't have surnames in the same way that most people do (noble "surnames" usually deriving from territorial titles etc).

Answer 4

William Cleton the Elder (1589 - 1644)
William Claiton younger (abt. 1610 - aft. 1658)
William (Claiton) Clayton Sr. (bef. 1632 - bef. 1689)
William Clayton Jr. (1655 - 1727)
William Clayton III (abt. 1685 - 1758)
William Clayton (1713 - 1757)

Answer 5

A line of Dukes of Aquitaine were all William, though they were known to cheat by changing their names

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Poitiers-63

The Ralph Cromwells were up to 9 at the last count

https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/Cromwell-Family-Tree-661

And this Hero of Hastings was the first of 16 in the official family pedigree

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Gascoinge-16

But some people, including WikiTree, have figured there aren't enough generations for the timespan and have inserted a couple more.

Sadly, the likelier story is that William VI adopted the surname as an importer of gascoyne wine (Bordeaux).  We suspect he had ancestors, but we have no idea what they were called.  Unless of course they were all called William fitz William.

But that still leaves 11 in a row who are documented.

 

Answer 6

so here is a line i worked through, it has 11 continuous Henry Percy's

you can see the connections using these profiles.

percy-35

Percy-34

percy-33

percy-40

percy-85

percy4

percy-23

percy-44

percy-50

percy-14

percy-410

i have another one that be longer, will post after a while! thanks for your input!

oh and titles don't count, only first and last names for this comparisons ok?

Answer 7

In patronymic country my inlaws have one line with nine consecutive  Erik, son of Erik starting with Erik Ersson (1686-1743). 

Comments

That seems perfectly reasonable to me.  

Answer 8

This will not hold a record but I have the following William's.

William Fears b. 1746

William Fears b. 1774

William Fears b. 1807

William Fears b. 1829

William Fears b. 1853

William Fears b. 1907

All but the last one (1907) went by William Fears. Some had middle names which certainly helped to distinguish them but two of them were conflated for a number of years but finally untangled. Besides this direct line, there were many others in the Fears line named William - yikes!!