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Effect of unusual names

On the middle names thing.
Yesterday I was looking in the 1881 census for an ancestor whose maiden name was was Sarah Leeder London. (yes, her mother's maiden name was Leeder) She wasn't hard to find - she jumped out at me as Sarah Leeder Leeder. She had married Edmund Cotts Leeder. Just to make sure I knew it was the former Miss London, that was the middle name of her two children - Catalina London Leeder and Roberto London Leeder. Sometimes I feel I'm living in a comedy sketch.
 
Love it. :D Imagine trying to say those names fast. Honestly, I thought names were complicated and unusual now but all this shows our ancestors had wonderful imagination!
 
Hi Liberty, have you checked the Cotts name for possibly yet another surname/middle name? Does all sound a bit 'Ronnie Barker':rolleyes:
 
I am really enjoying this thread but the term "rich relative" does keep popping into my head so naturally I "googled" it. Here are three garden paths I went down, one with someone's family tree of course , austenfamily and the other two I wont attempt to justify :rolleyes: , disneycharacter and monopoly Of course thanks to "emjay" I had to refresh my memory about Ronnie Barker as well.
 
When I first started researching my mother's line I thought life would be easy - her maiden name was Shufflebotham! However that turned out to be almost as common as Smith in the North Staffs area where she was born and also in Cheshire.
Fortunately like others in this thread other family surnames were used as middle names allowing me to get back to my 3 x Gt Grandfather Daniel but here it stops (for the moment) as all I can find is his marriage in 1816 and I only found that again due to the later use of his wife's surname as a middle name.
 
That cannot come soon enough - I have found out so much about this Daniel from various non-conformist and local government records including a document with his signature but cannot find his birth or his death - nor those of his wife Mary (Bostock).
You would think that with these names it would be easy.........................
 
Tim said:
Oooo I have Bostock's in my tree!
Click to expand...

Anywhere near Stoke on Trent?

Looking at your picture there is a family resemblance - and nothing to do with the tongue.
But then all kids of that age / era look the same I find.
 
trebor said:
Anywhere near Stoke on Trent?

Looking at your picture there is a family resemblance - and nothing to do with the tongue.
But then all kids of that age / era look the same I find.
Click to expand...

The oldest Bostock I have is William b1796 Hawarden, Flint.
 
Liberty said:
On the middle names thing.
Yesterday I was looking in the 1881 census for an ancestor whose maiden name was was Sarah Leeder London. (yes, her mother's maiden name was Leeder) She wasn't hard to find - she jumped out at me as Sarah Leeder Leeder. She had married Edmund Cotts Leeder. Just to make sure I knew it was the former Miss London, that was the middle name of her two children - Catalina London Leeder and Roberto London Leeder. Sometimes I feel I'm living in a comedy sketch.
Click to expand...

Looked further into this and it gets worse. In 1911 Sarah Leeder Leeder had said she had been married 29 years, with 2 children born, 2 living, which seemed incorrect on both counts, as she seemed to have at least 3, the first 2 of whom were born more than 29 years earlier. Then found the record of the marriage in 1880, so Catalina and Roberto were either pre-marital or not hers - but how did they get the middle name that was her maiden name? Turns out that the first wife of Edmund Cotts Leeder was Sarah's sister, Catherine Elizabeth London. And, shades of Ronnie Barker again, the final child born to this confusing family appears to have been called Elfrida Rowena London Leeder. You couldn't make it up, could you?
 
I know we were discussing surnames here, and I am sure somewhere there is another discussion about Christian names but I cant find it :(. Maybe this post can be moved if need be? Anyway I was merrily checking out some indirect ancestors today and scrolling down the listings in Ancestry.co.uk when I came across this name, although this person is nothing to do with my family line....

NAME: Lovepope Fowler
FATHER: Robert Fowler
BAPTISM: 28 Feb 1795 - Wyke Regis, Dorset, England
OTHER:
1795

I do actually have an ancestor who is called 'Love Leuter' in the Parish records,with sisters Unity and Temperance, but I have never seen this name. The daft thing is that I then went on to see if I could find any further reference to this name rather than looking for my own ancestors! ( I didn't). Dear oh dear.
 
As a very remote connection in my tree (her aunt married my Great grandfather's brother) I have the distinctively named Whippertie Fowler
(baptised Carlton Colville, 9 September 1906)
I think she may be the only example of this Christian name - I'm half-surprised the vicar went ahead with the christening.
 
I was browsing through East End of London parish records from the 1740s recently, looking for a missing ancestor (didn't find them :() and jotted down some of the cracking first names I saw as I went through. A small selection: Fardenandrew (corruption of Ferdinand?), Epaphroditus (variously mis-spelled), Dunkard, Wingman and Scarlet. Odd-looking first names were surprisingly common, although many of them are probably surnames used as first names.

The winner, though, would have to be Slick Guttrey, buried on 21 Jan 1742 - good evidence for time travel, I think, as someone has obviously carted a 1950s country music star back in time and left him there!
 
I'm a bit late contributing to the conversation on unusual names but I think the following will raise a smile: the surname of my great-grandfather's second wife was Peacock. She, too, had been married before - to a Mr Coot. And her father was Mr Crabb Peacock. By the way, if any of you have people with these names in your family trees I'd be delighted to know. Mine were (mainly) from Norfolk and Essex.
 
SuzanneD said:
I was browsing through East End of London parish records from the 1740s recently, looking for a missing ancestor (didn't find them :() and jotted down some of the cracking first names I saw as I went through.
Click to expand...
Like SuzanneD I too got sidetracked while browsing the Colchester parish records. The splendidly named Olophernes Towler (also spelt Toler, Touler, Toller) and his wife Mary had a brood of children baptised in the late 1600s. The penny dropped as far as his name was concerned when his last child was described as 'daughter of Oliver Towler and Mary his wife'.
 
Possibly it was Holofernes (from the Biblical Apocrypha) originally and got modified to Oliver(?)

I watched the TV programme on Marylebone Register office the other night and was rather tickled when the young couple were registering their baby George Cornelius. "How are you you spelling that?" "Oh God, I don't know how to spell it!'
Situation resolved by the young registrar Googling a character (Cornelius Fudge) in Harry Potter and the mother agreeing that was how they planned to spell the name. At least she was confident about spelling George.
 
A further entry for the unlikely name section

I was tracking a relative, seen in the 1901 census, and had to find her via her daughter in 1911, as she had remarried. In the 1911 census she appears with her husband who was rendered as Hadderuzar B Goff. My immediate reaction was that somebody had badly mangled the transcription. But on looking at the original, and backed up by finding references to him in other records I can confirm that he was indeed Hadderreezar Benjamin Goff, born 1863 Norwich. (Someone with exactly the sames names was born and died 1861 - presumably an older brother). I don't at present know where the name came from - it looks Biblical but even if it is, I don't know why anyone should inflict it on their child. (Other than the unhelpful argument that he was probably named after a relative also with exactly the same names born c 1836) I identified that 'my' man had been married before to a woman named Elizabeth (in Norwich, 1882), However, when I found there were two candidates with surnames either Stangroom or Grigglestone I began to feel there was conspiracy against me, and called a halt for the day.
 
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