Let me show you a little about the first names in Roman Catholic parish records.  We hear or we are told that such and such a name is very common, but how often do any of you look and actually *see* this if you are looking at records?  You do see the most common first names in your own family.  Me?  I know that John is the most common first name given to any child in parish records and Mary is the most common first name given to a girl?  How do I know that?  I know it because I have seen it, transcribed information from enough parish records to absolutely know it.

So, I’ve done this for myself so often in my head that it almost seems ridiculous doing it on a page for my website but let me show you an ‘analysis’ of first names from one set of parish records.  These I am going to post to the web today and as I was writing the post I decided to go through the first names to tell you which ones are the pet names or short names of which.  Then, I decided to count the numbers of each name and in so doing decided that this would be an interesting table for you all to look at:

The parish records are Baptismal of St. Mary, in Kilkenny city.  The year is 1754.  I give you the first names alphabetically with  names that can be considered a shortened version all on one line and the total number of people (child and mother or child and father) with that name or version. I began with an original list of 377 ( a few of these had Mrs. or not given)

Just look at my ‘results’
Ladies: Ann 13 ; Catherine: 24 ; Elleanor : 13 ; Elizabeth :13 ; Margaret: 18 and Mary 58
Men: James: 21 ; John 44 ; Michael 13 ; Thomas 10 ; William 10

The variation in the first names for men is greater than that for women.  The first name Ellen could be a variation of Eleanor but I have not included it as so.

I hope this little exercise is of use to some of you