The profile for Thomas Hollowell lists his parents as William and Elizabeth Coppingford Hollowell. My question is how this information is known. According to the late genealogist Vikki Hollowell Highfield:
Seventeenth century naming practices were to name the first son and daughter after the father's parents, the second son and daughter after the mother's parents, the third son and daughter were named after the parents, and other children were named after siblings and other relatives. Although this was not set in stone, Thomas and Alice did name their third daughter Alice.
According to that logic, Thomas father would have also been named Thomas. However, another old Hollowell genealogist, Lucy Elliott Hollowell, surmises that because Thomas and Alice named two children "John" (the second was born after the first one died as a teenager), she believes that such naming would indicate that Thomas' father would also have been named John.
Does anyone have definitive proof one way or the other?