On Oct 19, 8:20*am, "Don Phillipson" wrote:
wrote in message

...

In uk.rec.gardening R H Draney wrote:
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. . . .

I can imagine it being rather confusing for /everyone/, unless they
dismissed any reference to the first child from any future conversation!

We can however approach this empirically. * When family histories
offer no evidence anyone found this confusing 150 years ago, it is
fair to say there was probably no such confusion.

True. They could refer to "the late John" and "the living John" Also,
"Jessica the old maid" or "The stuttering Jim", "the limping Howard",
"the dimwitted Eddie" to distinguish them from their namesakes in
those pre-PC ages.