Genealogy Chat

You know how names become old fashioned over the years? Not that many children named Ethel or Gertrude around at the moment. When I was at school there were a bucketload of Margarets and Christines, but they aren't as popular as they once were. I was really pleased when I found the name Selina in my tree - thought it would be easy to trace, but no. Seems to have been very common in the mid 1800s. Then I came upon Thirza. Never heard of it; thought it may have been mistranscribed. It wasn't though, and since the first one, I've found it not so uncommon after all - and not just in my family I've googled and found that it's Hebrew. I'm wondering why should it have been popular in the early 1800s and then just disappear?

as you say, name trends come and go, we have hardly any young Margarets etc. Maybe it was a name that became unfashionable and died out. But as you say, Thirza was a very popular name wityh over 10,000 born 1837 - 1984.

Thirza, also recorded as Tirza, Thyrza, Thurza etc was v. popular at one time, as was Kezia. very popular chap's names, now forgotten was Jabez. I had an Uncle Jim whose real name was Jabez. Some names stay around - William, Elizabeth. Others seem to have a shorter shelf-life - you can almost place the decade(s) with names like Sandra, Brenda, Malcolm... nell

In Kilvert's diary - Kilvert was a clergyman in Victorian times whose wonderfully detailed diaries have been published - he mentions a pamphlet of an apochryphal bit of the bible mentioning Thirza and Mahala. You often find two sisters in a family using these names. I thought that he said they were the first and second wives of someone in the Old Testament, but Googling suggest that they were the wives (and sisters) of Cain & Abel.

in 1880's and onwards you were named after relatives which followed a particular pattern especially in ireland and as must people died at youngish age compared to today .many did not know there grandparents etc so names died out. lizz

Going on the trends in my and my husband's trees, I would say that 1800-1860ish families tended to name elder children after grandparents and parents, younger children after the parent's siblings (ie child was named after aunts/uncles). 1860s-1900s this trend is gradually dying out, and people are choosing names with no family history. At the end of the 19th century, flower names for girls - Rose, Violet etc are popular. Ernest, Frederick come in for boys. Husband's Welsh lot are all called John, William, Mary or Margaret in the first half of the 19th C. There's an interesting piece about Welsh forenames in the 1851 census on Genuki which shows that there was not much variation in names.

You might find this interactive site interesting. http://babynamewizard*com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html (replace * with . ) It covers the 1880s right up to 2004 and shows which names were most popular. Surprisingly no sign of Jabez or Thirza (which feature on so many censuses) but Mahala is there! Thirza evolved into Theresa and possibly later into Tracey. Though I actually have an 1844-born Tracy (Ann Stubbs) in my tree! Her birth was registered in the December quarter 1844. And I thought we Traceys didn't get invented until much later!

When I was young, Tracy was a boy's name! So was Kim and Stacey... I think we should petition to bring back Thirza, Kezia, Jabez and Mahala! Great names. Lizzie

Great site Tracey, I was born in the Tracey/Sharon era, 1963. My name was rather unusual back then, I've only met a couple of people my age with the same name. My mum always calls me Sammy and that was often mistaken for Sally, then she was met with a puzzled look when she told them her baby was actually called Samantha. Using the graph on that site I can see there were a few in the 1800's, I have seen a couple on the census. Sam

Hi Picking up on what Elizabeth and Helen have already said about naming children after family members, I was talking to my dad about all the same names appearing in literally every generation of his mother side of the family. Not only one lot of children but all the children used the same names (Alfred, Arthur John, etc.) It makes it very confusing (and expensive!) to work out who 'belongs' to who! My father said that you would mostly start naming the children after the wealthiest aunt / uncle rather than the poorer ones. This was Bermondsey in South London, a very poor area, but I imagine it was a likely common practice everywhere. Quite logical really but it adds another dimension to family research! Jo

I can't remember the exact details but Selina was probably named after a prominent lady from the chapel movement usually means family were nonconformists. I found one of my Selina's transcribed as Salome on ancestry. The family were congregationalists. I have Thirza and Kezia but not the same family. Favourite names twins Noah and Pharoh. If they were named after ancestors I think it was a long time ago.

I wonderd were the name Mahala came from. I have one in my family tree, she was born in Devon 1871. Linda.

Funny you should say that Linda - my Thirza's from Devon too! So are the Selinas. Must have been God fearing families. Lizzie

I think you'll find that Devon & Cornwall were stronghold areas for non-conformist churches whose members often went in for biblical names. The Cornwall RO has a site with a list of 'Silly Names' (the pages are really headed thus) and a lot of those historical names appear. Christine

Christine, thanks for the info. If they were non-conformists, does that mean that they won't appear on the usual Parish registers? It would explain why I can't find them!! Lizzie

I think the lady Annie was referring to was Selina, Lady Huntingdon who was part of the Methodist movement. My 3xgt grandfather was baptised in a Lady Huntingdon 's Connexion chapel, Spa Fields, Clerkenwell in 1824 (just across the road from where the London Metropolitan Archives is now) - the baptism records from that , and other nonconformist chapels are held by the National Archives at Kew and there are copies on microfilm at the Family Records Centre. PS these names haven't all died out - I had a girl called Mahala in my class when I was teaching about 5 years ago. She was named after her aunt. Mind you she will cause problems for family historians in the future because everyone in her family knew her as Minnie.

Lizzie, I'm afraid so! I'm trying to find records of my husband's family of CHAPMANs in North Devon, without much success. I'd more or less decided they were a brick wall and not worth chasing, but this last w/e we were doing a bit of house-clearing and found t hat my late M-i-L had kept the 1902-3 correspondence between her father, Arthur Willoughby CHAPMAN, and a person who had proved to be his 2nd cousin, Willoughby J CHAPMAN, in Texas. It occurred to me that there might be some people researching a name like that, so I did a bit of Ancestry hunting and googling and found a grand-daughter of W J Chapman. We are now in touch - she was delighted with my transcriptions of the correspondence (which had lots of family tree info because they'd been trying to work out how they were related), and has generously reciprocated with a copy of W J C's father's essay(?) in which he gives very comprehensive family tree info for the whole of that part of the family! Don't give up - but you may have to do a bit of lateral thinking to find what you need. Christine