When is a name not a name

[Paul Bridges]

I have started working on a branch of my family that is from Quebec.
The family I started with in the late 1800's had 10 children with 7 boys.
Six of the boys were baptised with Joseph as the first given name of several.
I asked a descendent about this and he told me it was a common practice, but the name
Joseph was then never used in marriages, deaths, census, or in passports etc.

Quebec did not have civil registration until fairly recently, the churches and other organizations passed on the B M D data once a year to the civil authorities. I do not
know if the name Joseph would have been included.

How should I treat this name from a genealogy point of view ?
My inclination is to leave it out of the name field and add it as a note.

I am not sure, but girls may have been given the name Maria in a similar way.

[rodrigue]

Re: When is a name not a name

I have started working on a branch of my family that is from Quebec.
The family I started with in the late 1800's had 10 children with 7 boys.
Six of the boys were baptised with Joseph as the first given name of several.
I asked a descendent about this and he told me it was a common practice, but the name
Joseph was then never used in marriages, deaths, census, or in passports etc.

Quebec did not have civil registration until fairly recently, the churches and other organizations passed on the B M D data once a year to the civil authorities. I do not
know if the name Joseph would have been included.

How should I treat this name from a genealogy point of view ?
My inclination is to leave it out of the name field and add it as a note.

I am not sure, but girls may have been given the name Maria in a similar way.

For a certain period of times, it was a common enough practice to give Joseph as the first of the given names given to a boy; but more often than not, this first name was not used by the individual. As an example, my own given names are Joseph-Liguori-Roland-R

[Al Poulin]

Re: When is a name not a name

The name Marie was a common first given name for girls. I have cases in marriage, death, and civil records where both Joseph and Marie were the only given names combined with the surname.

The copies of registers passed on to the civil authorities by the churches were literal transcriptions of the registers retained at the parish level. Oftentimes, these copies were generated in real time along with the books retained by the parishes, and signatures of the witnesses may appear in both sets. On rare occasions, one may find variations between the two renditions of an act such that consulting both can resolve problems in detail.

Al Poulin