Nell - I've never come across anyone called Urban either.
This is my "nightmare" family. There seem to be at least 5 different families of Placketts in Breaston in 1851. One of them I know is definitely my ancestral family.
I picked up extracted entries only from the IGI trying to sot them out, and started panicking when "my" Thomas Plackett's sister Ann married Thomas Plackett
I then asked Elaine (Derbyshire Dancer) to check about 6 marriages against the original PR's at Matlock - and she found ther were two distinct families with parents John and Ann in the same time period. I asked her to glance at baptisms for me as well to confirm the 8 siblings I was interested in - and she made a quick note of 70
I have this with various families. You'd think in a small village where every other couple is called Mary & William or John and Ann, that they'd have either given their children distinctive names or changed their own. I can only imagine the conversations round the village green between the local gossips:
"You know Ann's pregnant? Yes, Thomas' daughter. No, not Thomas the labourer, the other Thomas. No, the one whose wife died. Not Elizabeth, Betsy! Yes! Anyway everyone thinks the father is Thomas. No, not Ann's father! Thomas, Robert and Susan's nephew" etc.
well at least Urban is distinctive lol. I also have a Nahum in amongst the Thomas's, Henry's, John's and William's
As for that conversation around the village green - the possibilities for through confusion must have been endless!! Especially as nearly all this lot were lace workers (mostly female) or coal miners
And that is why, in little villages, everyone had a nickname.
Darwen, in Lancashire is famous for this. They share about 15 surnames and 20 forenames, so you have "Betty o' owd Anne's", "John o' owd Nathan's" "Skriking Tom" "Little owd Billy"and so on.
Sometimes these nicknames even crept into the official records, which is handy. However, I'm not impressed with the distinction between "Timothy of Owd Timothy's" and "Owd Timothy o' Timothy's". Nor that those baptised as Elizabeth were ever after called Betty, and those baptised Betty were ever after called Elizabeth...
My GGGrandmother's aunt had 5 generations all called Elizabeth Caroline, except they were Elizabeth , Betty , Carrie , Betsy and Caro ! Do you think imagination for names is a modern thing. The last one called her daughter Alice (on official records) but always known as Queenie!
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