Sacha filted:

On 2012-10-19 00:33:40 +0100, "Don Phillipson" said:

Family trees of the 18th and 19th centuries seem to confirm the
normality of death before maturity. Some of my ancestors applied the
same Christian name to three successive children (because the first
two died in infancy.) The implication is that such families did not
feel they were "missing a child."

I've come across that several times in my family tree. I think one poor
family had three attempts to get a child called John, before
succeeding. It seems - in these cases - either an attempt to carry on
a family name, or perhaps a tribute to the child that had died. In our
own time, a friend of mine considered calling a new son after a
cot-death baby. She didn't.

I've heard that some bereaved parents did this as a folk protection against the
Grim Reaper taking away the new child; the idea was to confuse the spirits into
thinking that they had already taken this one....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.