Hello,
Thanks for two interesting and essential essays from @Ireland XO' on naming patterns and sponsors, that help enormously. I had deduced some and always meant to find the rest and you did it for me.
I am still puzzled though as to reasons why only one sponsor is given in a 'respectable' family? I have several families where this has happened and the names before and after are solidly the in-laws. Could the author suggest some other reasons?
Also a number of baptisms have three names, again in families with several children and no cause to suspect anything unusual. Also, at weddings, I often have three sponsors and they can all be men? Shotgun wedding comes to mind but maybe there are more sociable reasons?
One of my observations was that often the parents stop having children when the eldest child gets married and starts producing their own? I assume this would be to give a hand with the next generation? Does anyone else find this in their records?
Lastly, I have tended to see that the fathers name is omitted from the usual naming pattern, inreasingly until the late 1800s and tends to be placed at the last born, sometimes the mothers name too. Presumably, this prevents or reduces the confusion of potentially having three generations with the same name and possibly in the same house? I have yet to test the idea that when the grandfather dies this may allow the name to be passed to the father's son?
I would lie to hear from anyone who can bear proof or not to these themes?
Regards,
Seamus
Seamus Crowe, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘
Saturday 27th Jun 2020, 12:05PMMessage Board Replies
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Hi Séamus
Can you tell us which counties your findings relate to? And which religion, in each case?
IrelandXO_DM
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Hello,
The original XO articles re;ated to the principles of the BaptismsRoman Catholic Church?
That therefore applies to all of Ireland?
The incidences are numerous and I have my own anecdotal reasons for some of the questions but I wanted someone with more knowledge to answer the questions as the author was not aware od these issues and suggested I post for answers.
I can imagine that there are many reasons but I wanted more scenarios. One I came across again yesterday was "strangers" - not from the parish have two children(?) baptised and there is one sponsor for each of them, two females with the same surname. I can imagine this is an act of Charity by the two women - I know my own aunt once did the same thing, to allow the people baptised to be accepted into the church and therefore the possibility of being accepted into Heaven.
Similarly, three male sponsors for a wedding may be for a very symbolic and important marriage or a shotgun wedding. However, it would be nice to know the RC thinking about this rather than making it up myself.
Guess I will have to find an RC historian. :)
Regards
Seamus
Seamus Crowe, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘