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Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth and another. What’s with all these Elizabeths? Did godparents also promise that infant boys would always choose a bride called Elizabeth?
There was great, great grandfather John who managed to marry two Elizabeths.
Were the parents of Suffolk limited in their knowledge of other Christian names? Did they secretly yearn to call their daughters Karen, Kim or Kylie, but the parish clerk could only muster the noble Elizabeth in the register.
What did they call themselves? There must have been some variation with all these Elizabeths living in such a small village as Assington.
Then when the wives bore girls what did the Williams and Johns name them? If your mother is Elizabeth why not your daughter?
Just a smidgeen of information of these 18th and 19th century ancestors sends the mind into imagining Eliza, Betty, Bess and Lizzie sweeping their cottages, hanging out the washing, gossiping in the street, hastening on Sunda
ys to St Edmund’s church. And perhaps dreaming of a wild card name for their next daughter.
Had trouble logging into the Bridport this morning, until a truly helpful lady in their offices advised me they already have an entry from a Maggie Davies – and the system threw a wobbly at receiving another. Fortunately my double doesn’t seem to have submitted anything to the Yeovil Literary Festival. Yet!
Valerie only has the alternative of Val. I can choose between Maggie, Margot (my Dad’s favourite), Meg, Peggy, Peg, Mags (from school) and, of course, Margaret. Presumably this was to differentiate between so many similarly named people. With a grandmother and two aunts called Margaret on my Scottish side, I was doomed…