Juniors, Seniors, II (2nd), III (3rd), etc. and related topics

 Well, you learn something new every day, if you keep an open mind and your natural curiosity.

I thought I had learned that men, named after their father's, usually, were only, technically, a Junior, if their full name was EXACTLY the same as their father and Dad became a Senior when he named his son after himself.  Then, if the Junior named a son after himself, the son became the 2nd or II, etc.  Well, no.  

Because, I had found many, many juniors whose first and last names were the same as their father's but not necessarily their middle name.  I also found lots of Juniors who didn't use that suffix, Jr., nor did their fathers use Sr.

I had also learned, over the past decade, that after Senior dies, it's more correct that Junior drop the Jr. since he's no longer the Junior; although that practice is not necessarily followed.  I've also noticed that celebrity Juniors usually don't follow that practice; particularly if both were celebrities.

And, sometimes the name skips a generation.  And, sometimes the name is given to a nephew, etc.

So, I asked, at WikiTree because they have a way to ask such questions and tons of people there, more knowledgeable than I, about things genealogical; even professional genealogists.  This is what I learned:

First, the ideas I had about how and when to use Junior and Senior and 2nd, 3rd, II, III, etc. came from Emily Post's Etiquette and she doesn't cite her sources, so....  

One person, at WikiTree, answering indicated that Junior and Senior is primarily an English language thing.  They also said that it's not always father and son but could be Uncle and Nephew.  They also said that, as far as exactness of the full name, prior to the 19th century, middle names did not usually exist.

Another person informed that, in England, the II, III, etc. were reserved for Monarchs.

From one WikiTree member who answered: "Sadly, the way a suffix is applied is not consistent so what may be acceptable to one family, may not be recognized in another. All are correct if it's on the birth certificate!"  That seems to be the prevailing practice; although I haven't checked any of the birth certificates I have.

I personally like the Emily Post method, or some of it.  And, I like middle names because they differentiate people and it's very helpful in family history research to have people named uniquely.  It's just easier to keep people straight if all the William Smiths in a family have different middle names.

But, as I indicated above, it's a free-for-all in naming.  And, now names are made up that don't even have meanings behind them.  Gone are the days when both surnames and given names actually meant something.  Rufus means red (hair), Violet was named for a flower, April for the month.  Surnames like Cooper, Smith, Cartwright told you what they did as a profession.

After all these years of researching family history, I've acquired an interest in Onomastics, the study of proper names (See, open mind, natural curiosity):  

After all, why, out of all her siblings, did Aunt Mary not have a middle name, when all the rest did?  

Since, many middle names come from other family members (mine from Aunt Iona), where did Joseph King Odell's middle name come from?  I'm particularly interested in this family tidbit and the fact that at least one other person in the family had that middle name and that my father's name, Leroy, means the king in French.  Does all that have some significance or is it just coincidental?

I find some people's names very interesting:  

I think the most unattractive given name I've come across is Permelia which means "by sweetness", derived from Latin and is a variant of Pamela which I think is a pleasant name.  I don't find it a sweet name.

I was told that my grandfather, William Odell, changed the spelling of our surname to O'Dell because he had a younger uncle named the same, William Odell, and didn't like to be called Little William when he was the elder.  But, their names were not the same; his was William Joseph, his uncle was William Ralph, so he could just as well have used his middle name, Joseph.  And, his uncle wasn't younger, he was older by 4 years - so much for the accuracy of family stories.  Don't trust them.

I've said elsewhere, in this blog, that I realized, over the past few years that most of the names of our ancestors and relatives that we've ever seen have been written by someone other than the person themselves.  So, I've begun to collect signatures, when I can find them, of ancestors and relatives.  That, almost immediately, made me aware of how recently we, as a species, became educated and literate.  Looking through the various censuses, you see, right away, how many ancestors could neither read nor write.  In some cases, it was because they were immigrants and didn't, yet, know English, but, in many cases, most had no or little education.  They were needed, at home, working.  They lived subsistence lives.

Education, in the broader meaning, is a wonderful thing; as I said at the very beginning of this post.