Giving a child a name of hope was understandable in Victorian times. Kanye West already has a daughter called North (North West, get it?) and it is reported his next child will be named Easton. When will this modern fad for bizarre names end? Except that it's not so modern.
Woollen spinner Sidney Sykes and his wife Betty of Huddersfield had a large brood of children in the mid 19th century. The 1851 Census notes that among them were sons Dowell, Livewell, Diewell and Fairwell. Odd but at least they ring with sincere hopes for their future in the poverty and squalor of the world in which they lived. and are eminently more sensible than celebrity children called Tu Morrow or Ocean.
Mind you, Victorians also had a sense of humour, daftness and pretensions of grandeur.
Genealogy firm Fraser and Fraser released some of the best earlier this year. How about the poor little lad in 1886 who was named That's It Who'd Have Thought It. Perhaps the baby was a surprise? He later changed his name to George. Mr and Mrs Johnson opted to call their offspring King Arthur in 1885, Thomas Day named his son Time Of in 1899, which was apparently a family tradition. Poor little Friendless Baxter was baptised in 1871, the Goldstones called their latest child One Too Many in 1870, and Mr and Mrs Cope named their son Leicester Railway in 1863 because he was born there in a railway carriage.
Other odd names, from a registrar's list published in the Westmorland Gazette in 1850, include Loyal Thomas Inkpen, Zaphnathpaaneah Drayson, Repentance Taylor, Prince Albert Garmon, Matilda French Onion, sisters Emma Tuesday Taylor and Eliza Thursday Taylor (guess which days they were born on?) and the delightful Happy George Dadd.
Maybe Easton and North West are not so odd after all.
Read more at http://tinyurl.com/k6omhwv
Woollen spinner Sidney Sykes and his wife Betty of Huddersfield had a large brood of children in the mid 19th century. The 1851 Census notes that among them were sons Dowell, Livewell, Diewell and Fairwell. Odd but at least they ring with sincere hopes for their future in the poverty and squalor of the world in which they lived. and are eminently more sensible than celebrity children called Tu Morrow or Ocean.
Mind you, Victorians also had a sense of humour, daftness and pretensions of grandeur.
Genealogy firm Fraser and Fraser released some of the best earlier this year. How about the poor little lad in 1886 who was named That's It Who'd Have Thought It. Perhaps the baby was a surprise? He later changed his name to George. Mr and Mrs Johnson opted to call their offspring King Arthur in 1885, Thomas Day named his son Time Of in 1899, which was apparently a family tradition. Poor little Friendless Baxter was baptised in 1871, the Goldstones called their latest child One Too Many in 1870, and Mr and Mrs Cope named their son Leicester Railway in 1863 because he was born there in a railway carriage.
Other odd names, from a registrar's list published in the Westmorland Gazette in 1850, include Loyal Thomas Inkpen, Zaphnathpaaneah Drayson, Repentance Taylor, Prince Albert Garmon, Matilda French Onion, sisters Emma Tuesday Taylor and Eliza Thursday Taylor (guess which days they were born on?) and the delightful Happy George Dadd.
Maybe Easton and North West are not so odd after all.
Read more at http://tinyurl.com/k6omhwv
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