SKYNNER, Thomas - Need some genealogy advice (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Friday, August 12, 2011, 02:50 (4856 days ago) @ SkinnerDS

Welcome to this great site !
First welldone on doing the work yourself first, many dont seem to want to bother.
That said theres plenty here who will help you further, some experts and some just keen newcomers. Also please read the FAQ at top of thepage.
Re your basic questions:

1. I've only been researching this year, mostly thro this site.I dont think theres any rules whatsoever about who a child is named after. I dont think in Britain its at all normal to use Senior & Junior as it is in the US and perhaps Canada too.
I named my son William, after my father, and his before him & so on. We did so to preserve the tradition, much to my mother's surprise & delight. I guess this was the same way back. From studying several family lines on this site, its so common if not the norm to repeat first names down the line, certainly thro the C19th. My son's middlename is the same as mine, I guess thats a common idea too.
In my experience before the C18th, this perpetuating of Christian names often occurred without having middlenames either (or at least they wernt recorded as Baptism records) - so making our task that must trickier.!?.
So in essence, anything goes, in your case Thomas it seems. In the C19 century there seems a smaller choice of likely names, probably after royalty etc, and occasionally Biblical ones; whereas nowadays we have a much wider variety of possible names to choose from dependant upon our favourite TV or sports stars perhaps, such as the Kylies (Neighbours) and the like, as well as the traditional ones.

2. Its quite normal for census records to show people getting "younger" than they really are !, the returns were purely based on verbal replies without checking later. Also in those days, especially in rural areas and before the arrival of railways and factories etc, people's lives wernt governedby or so concernedabout timekeeping and dates on a calendar, they lived by the seasons and the sunlight. Accurate records of birthdates just wern't needed so less focus was placed on remembering such things.

I hope this helps, good luck with your research, I'm confident you'll receive more help. Dont forget you can search this forum, someone else may have already done your work, also see all the old documents, photos, newspaper articles etc.

ATB Jeff