What’s in a name?

These days people just tend to choose names they like for their babies.  Perhaps it’s a friend’s name, or a favourite Bible character or one whose meaning seems appropriate.  It wasn’t always that way, certainly in Scotland.  There were strict rules for how you named your children.

The pattern, which you can often follow through many generations was:

• The first son was named after his father’s father
• The second son was named after his mother’s father
• The third son was named after his father

• The first daughter was named after her mother’s mother
• The second daughter was named after her father’s mother
• The third daughter was named after her mother

If you were a real stickler you could continue to follow a formula for the fourth and fifth of each gender (for sons, the father’s oldest brother followed by the mother’s oldest brother), but by then many people felt they’d done their family duty!

So, looking at my Naismith ancestors we had James Naismith, then Archibald Naismith (sixth son, so chosen by parents), James Naismith (first son), Archibald Naismith (first son) and Archibald Naismith (third son, and my father).  That shows one complication, which is that if you’re the third son and get your father’s name, then the first son of every succeeding generation will share your name, but because of their grandfather not their father – going by the pattern, I should have been Archibald, and so should my elder son.

Another complication is that the system produces lots of cousins with the same name.

So my great-grandfather was James Brown Naismith.

James Brown Naismith’s eldest son was Archibald Naismith, and his eldest was James Theodore Naismith (the Theodore feels a bit of a rebellion against the system – the more normal thing would be to call him James Brown Naismith).

James Brown Naismith’s second son was William Fraser Naismith (named after his mother’s father).  His only son was James Archibald Naismith.

James Brown Naismith’s third son was also James Brown Naismith, and his eldest son was James Brown Paterson Naismith (his mother’s maiden name was Paterson).

To complicate things further, James Brown Naismith’s second daughter Janet Brown Naismith (known as Jenny) also named her son James (James Naismith Reid), though that was principally after his father’s father who was also James, as indeed was his father.

So four cousins, all called James.  What do you do to distinguish them at family get-togethers?  Simple.  You call them respectively James, Jim, Jimmy and Hamish.

Oh, and if the pattern had been continued through the generations then me and my sisters would be (in age order)  Joann, Archibald, Alice and Margaret.  And my children would be Joycelyn, Archibald and Edwin.