RALPH, Ellen Charlotte, born Jan 1888 UK. (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Sunday, June 09, 2013, 13:42 (4187 days ago) @ MJHansen2012

Hi,
I searched this when you first posted but with no usefull conclusion, so I waited until youn(hopefully) gave more clues as to "your" Ellen's likely location. I searched the various free nationwide websites in addition to this FoD one, I suggest you do the same ie GlosBMD, FreeBMD, GlosBMD, LDS (Latterday Saints aka Family Search) and the Ancestry Free Search pages (no subscription needed).
Unfortunately the conclusion I came to was
1. Ralph isn't a particularly common surname, which helps. The above results SUGGESTED to me that the Glostershire Ralphs tended to be from Stroud/Chipping Sodbury area so just outside the Forest across the Severn.
2. Ellen and even Ellen Charlotte were quite popular/common names at that time. Also sometimes young ladies (and men occasionally) "gave" themselves additional names, perhaps when they marry, often family ones such as their mother's and in my experience often names sounding perhaps "grander" than they were Baptised with, perhaps they'd read the Bronte novels etc :-) In other words, she MAY have just been Baptised Ellen, a very common name then, altho hopefully from this search viewpoint this isnt the case.
3. Richard is quite a common Ralph name.
4. Both above points 2 & 3 seems to apply across the country, not obviously specific to a particular area.
5. I searched the LDS & Ancestry sites using the full name and again with the father's name Ralph, but no clear clues at all I'm afraid except for one hit far from the Forest but that girl remained in the UK as told by the subsequent Censuses. I think your best plan is to repeat these searches, being carefull/systematic and see what comes up.
ALSO PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT YOU KNOW, ie how do you know her birth date, is this from your NZ Census for example, or ?. The more clues the better.

I do hope you have more luck than I did, sorry I cannot be more helpfull.

Please see this prior post re the above-mentioned sites.
http://www.forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=35296
I'll have another look later and hopefully update this post.

Best of luck, Jeff

ps sorry to use the word "common" !.
I mean this purely from a statistical viewpoint, not a reflection on the person's background or behaviour !

UPDATE: Only a guideline of course as people did migrate around the country especially in our case along the GWR railway routes etc, but this is a great website for getting a feel for what part of the UK any particular surname is most common so probably originates from, it displays the results of the 1881 Census and agin for 1998. If you search the Ralph surname altho its quite widespread it is definitely most prevalent in the south east, Kent etc. To me this suggests it maybe of French origin initially. However it's also very strong in the far north of Scotland, although of course far less people here generally, so maybe it's Icelandic/Nordic originally ?.
http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Map2.aspx?name=RALPH&year=1881&altyear=1998&a...

Here's another site I like to use, it can give an interesting and apparently well-researched insight into a surname, it certainly thinks Ralph has Nordic (Scandinavian) origins. http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/ralph.

Re searching the above sites, just had a second look at LDS as I call it, unforutnately it seems this doesnt offer any hits for NZ at all, but the site is excellent with a huge database and I strongly recommend you use it if you havent already, it can be a little longwinded sometimes but here (I hope the link works??) is the results for Ellens born UK in the 1880s. As you can see no obvious hits, and the Ralphs do seem to often be from Kent.
https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results#count=20&query=%2Bgivenname%3A%2...

Similarly Ancestry.co.uk free search not overly helpful.
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?gl=ROOT_CATEGORY&rank=1&new=1&...

Searching just the NZ records I see many Ralphs in Canterbury NZ. I know there's a far older Canterbury in Kent (see above), I have no idea but wonder if the NZ town was named after and perhaps founded by people from Kent uk, possibly even Ralphs ?? Until today I'd never studied NZ history, apart from their cricket including as I type, I never realised Canterbury was such a "new" city.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_Association

HAPPY AND HOPEFULLY SUCCESSFULL HUNTING !!