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My grandfather always named his children according to the Catholic calendar. Therefore my mother had two brothers named Alejandro.

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My grandfather always named his children according to the Catholic calendar. Therefore my mother had two brothers named Alejandro. They were both born on March 17th–I guess he could have named one Patricio and the other Alejandro. The first died at the age of 1 plus months. The second was born 8 yrs later and lived to adulthood. I recall asking my grandfather if he did not worry about the second one dying, he said no.
My father also had a cousin with two daughters who were both named Maria Guadalupe. I asked him if both were born on Dec. 12th. He said one was, but the other was born in the Ano Guadalupano 1931-1932. Apparently you will find many Jose Guadalupes or Maria Guadalupes during those years. Interesting… I also have run across many a family where all of the males were Jose-something, and the females were Maria-something.. My parents obviously didn’t check the Catholic calendar when deciding to name me–there are no Santa Irmas. They must not have liked Gregoria 🙂

Irma
N. Calif.

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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:27:55 -0600
From: Stuart Armstrong
To: research@lists.nuestrosranchos.org
Subject: [Nuestros Ranchos] siblings of same name
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15

Esther … ,

> Rafael Lopez Ornelas … oldest male in a family of 13. His
> youngest brother was also named Rafael Lopez Ornelas

I have a surprising number of such instances in my database. And I
would say that in browsing the christening record images I have seen
MANY like this. It causes a lot of problems before you discover that
two siblings had the same name.

There are several scenarios I have seen.

A child is given the same name as an older sibling for no apparent
reason.
A child born on the birthday of an older sibling was often given the
same name.
A child born in the same month as an older sibling. Saints days
weren’t followed precisely – it seems that families often chose between
favorite saints whose days were close to the birthdate of the child.

Twins were often given the same name.

I have seen records that don’t even name each child distinctly – for
example, the record just says “Bacilios”, meaning two of them, and
“hijos legitimos” (plural) and in the margin the word gemelos (twins).
To my way of thinking I would somehow feel cheated if the recorder
didn’t make a separate record for my birth .

One particularly confusing instance was of a child born exactly 10
years to the day after his older brother, and was given the same name.
Until I discovered the christening records for both of them I thought
it was a typo or copying error.

In still another family I discovered 3 siblings named Francisca. Two
of them were twins, and the other was born exactly 6 years earlier to
the day.

Contrary to what I’ve often heard, there was no requirement that the
older sibling died young, although that sometimes happened. In the

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