Two words I’ve learned in recent years can be useful in genealogy.
The first word is necronym, which is simply defined as the name of a person who died. In some cultures speaking the names of the dead is taboo, but in others, necronyms are used as a way to honor the deceased by naming a newborn after a relative who has recently died. In earlier times, when families were large and child deaths were frequent, parents might reuse the name of a child who had died. An example can be found in the family of John Corey (1716/7-1784) of Sturbridge, Massachusetts, third child and eldest son of John and Mary (Griggs) Corey of Roxbury, Massachusetts. The younger John married Hannah Smith, and among their seven children was a boy named David, born 9 November 1751, who died at age two on 21 September 1754. Captain David Corey, a Revolutionary War veteran from Sturbridge, who died 7 November 1826 at age 71, was undoubtedly the last child born to John and Hannah (Smith) Corey. He had a brother Jacob who was born 15 March 1754, six months before the first David Corey died, so the birth of the second David would have been the first one to follow the death of the first David. Combining this fact with the second David’s age at death of 71 years, the second David would have been born in 1755, and so it is understandable that he would have been named after his recently deceased brother. Failure to consider all the facts has led to virtually all trees on Ancestry.com combining the birth date of the first David with the death date of the second one. Unfortunately, this error will continue to get propagated in more online trees as people mindlessly accept the “hints” offered up by Ancestry.
For the last several months, I’ve been writing and revising an article for The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. During the process, I’ve learned a lot, including the word onomastic, from Ian Watson, the editor of The Record. Onomastics may be defined as “the science or study of the origin and forms of proper names of persons or places ,” and the adjective onomastic is defined as “of or relating to proper names.” In the context of genealogy, onomastics is the study of names as they occur in different generations. For example, the objective of The Record article is to sort out the three namesake grandsons of John1 Corey of Southold, Long Island. One of these, John Corey, who married Dorothy Hobart in about 1706 and died in Southold in 1754, has been called the son of Jacob2 or Abraham2 by various authors. No previous authors have connected John Corey of Roxbury, Massachusetts to the Long Island family. Onomastics provides evidence to supplement other facts, including DNA tests, which will be presented in the article. John and Dorothy (Hobart) Corey had a son Abraham but no son Jacob. Score one for Abraham2 as the father of Dorothy’s husband (by the way, John and Dorothy had a daughter Dorothy who died in 1716, and a second Dorothy who was born in 1718—another example of a necronym). John and Mary (Griggs) Corey of Roxbury had a son Jacob and daughter Ann, but no son Abraham. Score one for Jacob2, whose wife and a daughter were named Ann, as the father of John of Roxbury. John and Mary also had a son Benjamin, as did Jacob and Ann.
All this may be, as a former Syrian colleague put it, as clear as the mud, but I hope it makes some sense to you, gentle reader.