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Very common in eras when the infant mortality rate approached or topped 25% less common now, though have seen a repeat as a middle name on occasion rather than a total recycle as once happened. Too common place then to be thought weird no matter how modern eyes see it. The American portraitist Charles Peale had 17 children iirc, one, Titian Ramsey was portrayed in a famous picture, The Staircase Group, when he died shortly after, the young brother born the same year was given the name. The 2nd Titian Ramsey Peale became famous in his own right, so he made the name his own.
As an aside, do check out the names Peale gave his kids, they're interesting.

Very common in my family too in previous generations that a new baby was given the same name as their dead sibling. There is one case in my family with my 2x great grandfather Henry though. Three years after Henry’s birth came a little brother John. When John was two he had according to his death certificate diarrhoea and vomiting which lasted three days. On the second day both Henry and John were christened as the parents must have realised their younger son wouldn’t survive. Henry was christened John Henry the same day as John was christened. Throughout his life then Henry continued to use a mixture of John, Henry and Harry.

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The second unusual one in my family was two sisters born around a year apart. The first daughter was named Elizabeth and when the second daughter was born they decided to name her Elizabeth too and changed their first daughter's name to Annie. Both girls survived to adulthood so we have never been able to fathom that one.

Very common until the early part of the 20th century, yes. Partly to do with honouring godparents and relatives, and also due to having a relatively small pool of common names.

I think this is mainly a thing of the past, when babies wwere more likely to die at or soon after birth and were considered fairly expendable. Easy come, easy go.
I would never use the dead baby's name again. I mean, for one thing, if you officially named it before it died it's on a birth and death certificate.
Second of all, it's as if the new baby is considered nothing more than a replacement. Which is sick.

Maybe it's more about the family following a set pattern of honouring that isn't interrupted by death. Like if a family really wants to name a baby after grandpa or a great aunt, but the babies keep passing away, they'll keep trying to use that honouring name with each new birth. So the babies aren't really named after each other, but another namesake. I've seen things like this crop up pretty often in certain genealogies.

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I have also heard of traditions where the custom is to always name a new baby after the most recent family or community member who has died. If that happened to be a sibling, then they'd all seem to have the same name.

Yes it seemed to very common 100 or so years ago, gets a little confusing with ancestry searches. If the honour name is a mn less confusing, still done, not so common. Some Luke the association, others rathers names not associated at all. New baby, new person, no baggage

I saw it once on the Czech side of my family. There was an Anna(1842-1842), and her sister was Anna(~1848) but honestly most girls on that side of the family had the name Anna. On my mom’s side of the family, my great grandmother’s older brother died in the Spanish Flu(3 years old). She was born a month later, and got the name Hilma Antonia, with her middle name honoring her dead brother.

My family tree on my maternal grandmother's side shows a habit of William naming his eldest son Robert, who named his eldest son William ... then there was a hiatus. Eldest son John, second son Edward, third son Robert. I was very puzzled, until I checked further. There had indeed been a first son named Robert, but he'd died as a preschooler. John and I think Edward were already present. Then came a daughter, and then the final son, who was Robert in accordance with the family tradition. His son was William, but left no children.

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We gave our children three names each. Our first daughter had my mother's name - Beatrice - as her first mn, and Mary as her second, though her other grandmother was actually Bertha Maria. We thought that Mary was close enough and worked better. She died when she was four, and we wanted another child. Our son said that if it was a boy, he'd move in with his friends round the corner, and if it was a girl, she'd have to have one of her sister's names. So she has Beatrice as her first name and, like the grandmother she never knew, she is known as Bea.

In my own family I saw this a lot as well in my family tree. One of my great grandma's for instance had 3 separate sisters named Anna. One died in infancy, one died in childhood, the 3rd made it to adulthood. I will note that I'm personally a very spiritual person and I believe that people's souls don't end upon death. With that in mind... how confusing this might be in a potential afterlife to be reunited with your siblings and have several named the same thing 🫠🤔 but then again, if we are being speculative anyway we might as well also imagine that we will have a higher level of consciousness to have no confusion and only distinction of the individuals.

This message was edited 7/15/2024, 6:30 AM

It's not just your family, it used to be common practice ( and In some cultures still is common practice) for many families to repeat names of deceased siblings for a new sibling. Part of it is because using family names used to be a lot more emphasized.. so if you make sure the name is reused your insuring that the name lives on in a living relative. Sometimes it simply a way to honor the deceased sibling. Checked online: supposedly Some cultures also believe that when you name a new baby after the deceased one the new baby is a reincarnation of the previous child, which would Sway naming for sure I'd imagine.