How Early Records Turn Perfectly Good Names Into Chaos
One of the great lies of genealogy is the idea that names are stable. We tend to approach records assuming a person has one name, spelled one way, used consistently, and recorded faithfully by every clerk, minister, and courthouse employee they ever encountered.
That illusion usually lasts right up until the first deed, census, or court record proves otherwise.
Lately, I’ve been living in name confusion. Not dramatic, soap-opera confusion…just the slow, grinding realization that early records treat names far more casually than modern researchers would like. And when you are trying to reconstruct families, children, and relationships, that casualness can feel personal.
Take Joel Webb.
Joel… or Joseph?
Most records I’ve found refer to my ancestor as Joel Webb. That’s the name that appears again and again, the one that fits the timeline, the geography, and the family cluster. And then there is one deed that calmly drops this phrase like it’s no big deal at all: “Joseph Webb, otherwise called Joel Webb.”
Otherwise called.
No explanation. No apology. No clarification. Just… there it is.
Naturally, this raises questions. Is Joel short for Joseph? Was Joseph his formal name and Joel his everyday name? Are there actually two men here who I’m accidentally merging? And to make matters worse, I’ve found other records for a Joseph Webb living in the same place and time Joel should be living.
So which is it?
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| Which is it? The name tag or everything else? |
Here’s the thing that record-heavy genealogy teaches you very quickly: one record does not get to overrule all the others just because it sounds official. But it also does not get ignored.
When a contemporary document explicitly states “otherwise called,” that tells me something important. At least one clerk or witness believed those two names referred to the same man at that moment in time. That doesn’t prove Joel always used Joseph, or that Joseph was his birth name, or that every Joseph Webb in the county was secretly Joel. But it does carry weight.
What I do not do is panic and rename him across my entire tree based on a single record. Majority usage matters. Context matters. And sometimes the most accurate conclusion is not certainty, but caution.
Then there’s the sibling problem.
John… and Jonathan.
Another layer of confusion comes when looking at Joel’s children. Did he name one son John and another son Jonathan? Could those be the same person? Or is this just another case of clerks being creative?
Here’s where modern instincts can get us into trouble.
To us, John and Jonathan feel very close. Practically interchangeable. Surely a family wouldn’t use both, right?
Except… they absolutely did.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, John and Jonathan were understood as distinct names. They show up side by side in families all the time. Parents didn’t worry about confusion the way we do. Communities knew who was who. Clerks usually knew who they were writing about. And when confusion does happen, it’s often the record keeper’s fault, not the family’s.
So no, the presence of both names does not automatically mean duplication. It means I need to look for overlapping lives… shared land, shared wives, shared timelines. Names alone are not enough to collapse identities.
And just when you think you’ve sorted the men out, the women enter the picture.
Nancy… Nanny… or Fanny?
Joel’s wife may have been named Nancy. Or Nanny. Or Fanny.
Or maybe she was Frances and everyone just did what they felt like that day.
Nancy and Nanny are often interchangeable in records. Fanny can be a nickname for Frances, but it also sometimes appears when clerks hear something vaguely familiar and write what they think makes sense. Add in handwriting quirks, dialects, and the unfortunate reality that women appear less often in records, and suddenly you’re left squinting at spellings and wondering if you’re chasing three women or one.
This is where genealogy stops being about finding answers and starts being about evaluating evidence.
What I’ve learned (the hard way)
Here’s the approach I keep coming back to when names start misbehaving:
Most records matter more than one record, but one record can still matter.
Explicit statements like “otherwise called” deserve attention.
Names are clues, not conclusions.
People are identified by patterns of place, family, associates, and behavior… not spelling.
And sometimes the most honest thing a researcher can say is “this remains unresolved.”
It’s frustrating. It’s messy. And it’s also exactly what real historical research looks like.
So if you’re feeling confused because your ancestor seems to have gone by two names, or named children too similarly, or married someone whose name changes depending on who’s holding the pen… you’re not doing it wrong. You’re doing it accurately.
Names, it turns out, are both everything and not nearly enough.
Source:
Patrick Hanks, Kate Hardcastle, and Flavia Hodges, A Dictionary of First Names (Oxford University Press).
This is one of the standard academic references for English given names. It treats John and Jonathan as separate entries, with distinct histories and usage patterns in English-speaking societies.
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