The Name Game

I knew when I started digging in to the family tree I was likely to run in to duplicate names. Even without the information on my mother’s family that my uncle has collected over the years (which includes at least one great grandaunt being named after a deceased older sister) I could have guessed I’d run into duplication just by looking around at my living relatives. There are names that repeat across the board on both sides, some are deliberate while others are coincidence and others still are just common names found in millions of families. My current favorite – the daughter of one of my second cousins on my mother’s side has the same first name as the daughter of one of my first cousins on my father’s side. I got very confused on Facebook one day wondering why my first cousin was posting baby pictures of her now six-year-old daughter before I realized, wrong cousin.

Still, it’s one thing to be able to keep track of living people with similar names, but a whole different animal when it comes to keeping track of ancestors with similar names. More than once in the past few months, I’ve found a record for one relative and attached it to the other and later realized I’d gotten confused. Usually, it’s something like finding a record for my grandmother’s brother Daniel and associating it with their father Daniel or it’s the whole Marshall Edward/Edward Marshall scenario of my grandfather and great-grandfather. My latest discoveries, however, are going to give me no end of fits.

After talking with my father’s cousin recently, I was able to confirm my earlier suspicion that the John Coleman I’d found in the 1900 census was my great-grandfather Daniel’s older brother. John Coleman married Sadie (Sarah) Meyers in about 1895 and they had five children who survived long enough to turn up in public records: Gladys, John, Ileen/Aileen, Marion, and Noel. Now we take a quick look at my grandmother’s family. Her siblings were John, Eileen, Daniel, and Margaret. Notice any similarities? I know my grandmother’s brother John was born in about 1905 and died sometime between 1910 and 1918, so I don’t expect to run into many conflicts with my grandmother’s cousin John who was born in about 1899 and who I’ve been able to track up to 1930 so far. However, when I saw Ileen’s name pop up and that she was born in about 1904 my first response was “you’ve got to be kidding me.”  Aunt Eileen, you see, was born in 1907. First cousins, born three years apart, in the same geographic region with nearly identical names. This is going to give me fits I’m sure, especially since the elder cousin spells her name both Ileen and Aileen in the records I’ve found thus far (and I’m praying that they aren’t actually two different people.)

On the upside, I suspect it’s also a clue – family lore has my great-great grandmother’s name as Ellen, could she perhaps also be Eileen? It may also reduce some research time as both names will likely show up in the same searches. Still, you can imagine the confusion that will arise as I search for information on the following people:

John Murray (my great-great grandfather)
John Henry Murray (my great granduncle)
Marshall Edward Murray (my great-grandfather)
Edward Marshall Murray (my grandfather)
John Coleman (my great-great grandfather)
John J. Coleman (my great granduncle)
John Coleman (my grandmother’s first cousin)
John Coleman (my grandmother’s brother)
Eileen Coleman Doheney (my grandaunt)
Ileen/Aileen Coleman (my grandmother’s first cousin)
Daniel Patrick Coleman (my great-grandfather)
Daniel Jerome Coleman (my granduncle)
Elizabeth O’Leary Coleman (my great-grandmother)
Elizabeth Coleman Murray (my grandmother)

Not confusing at all. Nope.

I think I need a glass of wine.