Baby naming and Ancestry.com

emma+karen

I promise this is not an ad!!! LOL!

I have been poking around on Ancestry today, mostly because I find it fascinating, but have discovered it is also a great source for baby name ideas!  I have always loved the idea of family names, and while I knew that DS middle name (Perry) was a family tradition for a couple generations, I was fascinated to realize it goes back quite far, to my 4th-great-grandmother.  Perry was her maiden name and she gave it to her son as his middle name, and it's come down through the family tree all the way to DS!  Pretty cool, when we mostly just thought we were giving him the same middle name as my dad.     I also found where Samuel, our top boy name, comes from--I knew it was in the family, but now I know exactly who!

Anyway, if you're stuck for baby names and dig family history, check it out! 

sarawifenow

That's really awesome. I don't know much about the website. Do you pay for a membership or is the information available at no charge? I kind of doubt it would be the latter ha!

swflJD

That's really neat!  I recently started compiling my family tree on there.  I think I've been more curious about it lately since I found out we were having LO.  During my digging, I even found some photos of DH's great-great-grandparents on there that a distant relative of his had uploaded, as well as newspaper clippings of their wedding announcement and obituaries.  We are planning to us a family name (Glen) for this LO's middle name.  It is my dad's middle name is Glen, and I knew it was his fathers and grandfather's, but I found out on Ancestry that it was also his great-grandfather's.  My dad had 3 girls, and his sister has no children, so I'm excited about being able to pass it on!

kp90

That's neat. Is it worth paying for though?

swflJD

You can start a free account (which is what I have right now) that allows you to manually input information and shows you some "hints" (records that potentially match a family member), but you have to pay for a premium account to have access to some of the more advanced search features. I still haven't decided yet whether it is worth paying for the additional features. I guess it will depend on how "into" I get as I make more progress with my family tree.

vinerie

Good idea! I clicked on this thread b.c. My H is obsessed with ancestry and loves to go on this site and see how he is related to historical figures. Anyhow, he also uses ancestry.com as an argument for not hyphenating LO's last name. He doesn't like how it will mess everything up, lol.

KaKip

I'm an educator at a history museum so I love me some ancestry.com. What a great idea to use it for name inspiration. I may have to steal this idea to help us pick out a middle name. 

@vinerie , I'm curious, what does your DH want as a last name? Just his? I've been going round and round with my husband about this as I kept my last name. He thinks it will be too confusing to hyphenate.  He actually has both his mom's and his dad's last name as this is the tradition in Honduras.

Just curious what options you are considering. 

amscape

I love ancestry.com even if it's expensive. You can usually do a free 2 week trial though!

I knew my grandmothers name was Anne but from ancestry I found out it goes back as the eldest daughters name to my great-great-great grandmother. Definitely using some form of Anne in baby girls name!

vinerie

KaKip said:

I'm an educator at a history museum so I love me some ancestry.com. What a great idea to use it for name inspiration. I may have to steal this idea to help us pick out a middle name. 

@vinerie , I'm curious, what does your DH want as a last name? Just his? I've been going round and round with my husband about this as I kept my last name. He thinks it will be too confusing to hyphenate.  He actually has both his mom's and his dad's last name as this is the tradition in Honduras.

Just curious what options you are considering. 

I kept my last name and we are hyphenating the LO's name. I think he would secretly prefer the baby have his name, but he has never pushed me on it. We are both academics and publish research; your name, in that scenario, becomes your brand. . He knows at this point I could never change my name. 

KaKip

Cool. I don't what we'll do yet but I've considered the whole my last name as her middle name. I like to joke with  DH that she should just be C___ Mc___ (my last name). He's not too receptive. Both of us have multiple syllable last names so it could be a tongue-twister if we hyphenate I suppose. 

amberraysofdawn

I love Ancestry! Have had an account for years. Haven't worked on it very much recently, as I've run into a brick wall with the last family line I want to research (the one my maiden name runs through). Starting to think that John R. from Greene County, Tennessee in the 1850s arrived via lightning strike or something...

Anyway, Ancestry can get pretty expensive, so for those of you who are asking about whether or not it's worth it to get an account...yes, it is. But I wouldn't get a full year's subscription or anything. Instead I'd recommend that you use one of two options:

A - get a monthly subscription (about $20) and use that first month or so to do all the research you can, and then cancel it/renew it as you actually have time for it. Because while you will find a lot of really neat stuff right off the bat, you're also gonna find that you need to do a lot more research than you think you will after that, and it's going to wear off pretty quickly. Especially if you don't have a lot of free time/energy to stare at page after page of poorly written/scanned census rolls, etc. (Not trying to scare y'all off! But that being said, doing all of this at once can get pretty overwhelming. If I were to use a paid account, I'd rather just use it for a few months spread out over the year, rather than trying to research it all at once. No point in paying for the months I won't use it. And I'm a HUGE research nerd who finds this kind of thing addicting.)

B - Sign up for a free account, and use the 14-day trial to your advantage as much as possible. Then go to your local public library, which usually has full access available for free (check the library's website for a listing of the online databases they provide access to). You'll most likely have to use the library's account (not your own), but there's an option where you can print/email yourself documents that you can then upload to your own Ancestry timeline. It's a bit more time-consuming, but a lot more cost-effective. Plus, if you have kids, most libraries have tons of free programs for them to participate in. It's something you can do while waiting for them to get out (assuming said program isn't one that requires parental involvement/supervision). And this way you're forced to do a little at a time instead of marathoning through and finding yourself still awake at 3 in the morning covered in chip crumbs and mad at yourself because you have to be somewhere at 8am and you really need to go to bed already but you just need to figure out this one connection that you *know* is close to being figured out.

(......not that I've actually done that or anything.....)

I personally recommend option B, but that's probably because the career path I've chosen involves working in public libraries, which I am a total nerd about. :P You might find that you prefer option A, or none of the above.