First Name Reused

[darkerhorse]

Have you ever come across this kind of situation?

A man has a son with his first wife. She dies and he remarries. He has a son with his second wife and reuses the first name. Both sons are alive at the same time for 50+ years in the same town.

I know first names were reused when the original child died but I don't think I've ever seen a first name reused for contemporaries.

My example comes from 18th century Sicily.

[MarcuccioV]

I have a related situation (of course) where 2 sons (quite a few years apart) both had the same first name (Lorenzo). I have located both birth acts & no secondary or middle names are indicated. In my family's case, both parents are the same for both sons...

Both were living at the same time and had normal lifespans...

[erudita74]

I also have two sons born to the same couple with the same first name. The older son was born in Sicily in 1891 and died there in the mid 1940s. The other one was born in 1906 and died at age 15 in 1921. Both died in their same native Sicilian town.

[darkerhorse]

To be clear, I don't know if this actually happened, I was just trying to see how common it was.

I have a case where two contemporaries with the same first and last names had father's who also had the same first and last names, and mother's with the same first name but different last names.

I had been assuming they were different families, but it recently dawned on me that it might be the same father with two wives reusing his first son's first name.

I still think it's more likely that there were two families, and the same names are a coincidence. I find no evidence of blood relation, if, in fact, they are two different families.

Unfortunately, they lived in the 18th century and I can't find any civil or church records to resolve this question.

[darkerhorse]

For what it's worth, the two contemporaries had 8 and 7 children respectively. Each gave his first son the same name as his (or their) father, but none of the names of the other 13 children matched. Each used a unique set of first names for their remaining children.

[darkerhorse]

My hypothetical case differs because it requires one father and two mothers.

I could see reuse being more likely with remarriage, wanting to honor the grandfather with sons from each wife. But again, I think it's more likely just coincidence, but I wish I could resolve it.

I'm trying to sort out blood relationships among those with the same name.