Insight on naming traditions/locales

[MarcuccioV]

Have you looked at the frequency distribution of names by town in Ancestry.com (excluding the U.S.)?

Where on Ancestry can I find this..? I'm not sure where on the site to look...

[darkerhorse]

On the left side of the front page of the search.

This is the result for first name Armida (exact match):

Filters
Census & Voter Lists 9,000+
Birth, Marriage & Death 40,000+
Military 311
Immigration & Emigration 7,000+
Newspapers & Periodicals 30
Stories, Memories & Histories 76
Maps, Atlases & Gazetteers 3
Directories & Member Lists 50,000+
Court, Land, Wills & Financial 1,574
Dictionaries, Encyclopedias & Reference 47
Family Trees

Record Location
North America 80,000+
Europe 20,000+
South America 2,329
Oceania 483
Asia 73
Africa 18

Record Date
1700 42
1800 6,000+
1900 70,000+
2000 20,000+

You can drill down on location - continent - country - province - town etc.

I'd start with an exact name search, and tend to focus on results before the 2000 or even before 1900s for your purpose.

[darkerhorse]

Results for Armida (exact match) after drilling down to Europe:

Record Location
Europe
Italy 10,000+
Sweden 4,712
France 671
Germany 647
Spain 578
United Kingdom 525
Finland 306
Belgium 127
Poland 67
Switzerland 60

Record Date
1700 13
1800 3,083
1900 4,079
2000 10,000+

You can keep drilling down on Italy to province - town - etc..

Note I didn't bother to drill down by record date, but you might want to.

Again, after comparing numbers you might want to compare percentages using total records for each geography as the base (a lot of work but rewarding). The raw numbers will give you some idea of patterns.

I use exact match for the names because if you don't there's too much noise in the results.

But you could experiment with trial and error.

[darkerhorse]

Just a reminder that the results by place are dependent upon the availability of records by place.

You know the law of big numbers is at work - all other relevant things equal, the more people in Rome, the more records from Rome, the more matches in Rome. That's why you might want to compute percentages.

You're also likely find more matches in places where digitized records are complete compared with places where digitized records are incomplete or missing.

Not to mention duplicate records and errors on Ancestry.com.

On balance, it's still a useful source for addressing your question, and at least to formulate hypotheses.

[MarcuccioV]

Thank you. I'll check it out over the weekend.

[MarcuccioV]

Just a reminder that the results by place are dependent upon the availability of records by place.

You know the law of big numbers is at work - all other relevant things equal, the more people in Rome, the more records from Rome, the more matches in Rome. That's why you might want to compute percentages.

You're also likely find more matches in places where digitized records are complete compared with places where digitized records are incomplete or missing.

Not to mention duplicate records and errors on Ancestry.com.

On balance, it's still a useful source for addressing your question, and at least to formulate hypotheses.

I searched quite a few of the names and no discernable pattern emerged. In only a couple of cases did any of the names tie back to the ancestral hometown, & only one record for each (and these were recent records from the 2000's).

In short, the names could have come from anywhere -- so it basically brings me back to the "traditions" question -- are uncommon names just an unusual circumstance or is this more common than I'm led to believe..?

The lack of repeats of names (and uncommon names at that) seems to buck Italian tradition (including that within the commune itself). So I guess this puts me back to square one...

[darkerhorse]

There may very well be no rhyme or reason for unique naming in your family.

However, if names don't tie back to your hometowns they may tied back to other towns suggesting that's where they originated.

I would think that's useful information for you.

Although, I suppose that would be more valid for surnames.

[MarcuccioV]

There may very well be no rhyme or reason for unique naming in your family.

However, if names don't tie back to your hometowns they may tied back to other towns suggesting that's where they originated.

I would think that's useful information for you.

Although, I suppose that would be more valid for surnames.

Yes, that's my thinking, anyway. I did a surname search as well, for a few of the rarer surnames, but it didn't really shine any light on anything I haven't already checked out...

[darkerhorse]

Although flawed, searching records by place is interesting when you have the time.