Odd Name

[Pandabean]

Just come across an odd name in my Ramsay line. Steedman and its a girl as well. Is this a mistake or is it really a name?

Ramsay Michael sailor & Elisabeth Smith their daughter Steedman born 27th Oct, baptized 31st. Witnesses Alexr Smith & John Smith.

[speleobat2]

Andy,

It's probably really her name. You don't say what year she was born, but I have a 2x great aunt named Robertson who was born in 1825. I was certainly surprised to find that she was a she when I checked the record on SP!

Carol

[Pandabean]

Carol, it was 1819 she was born. I have not heard of Steedman being used as a first name and I have no idea where it could have come from.

[Pandabean]

Hmmm I do wonder if this may be where it is from:

20/09/1754 PAGE ISABEL JOHN PAGE/ISABEL STEEDMAN F KIRKCALDY /FIFE 442/ 0030 0082

This would be Steedman's Great Grandparents. So assuming the father new his grandparents and following the naming pattern with the exception of the second son being named for the mother's father, seems to be the 4th son in this case.

[Alan SHARP]

Greetings from New Zealand.

Odd may be, but not that unusual. As reported elsewhere it is important to check the original hand written records. Children were assigned all sorts of "given" / "baptised" names. In the case of MUNRO's at Govan c1800 sibling daughters were only named Marshal and Giles/Geils plus some of the parish records did not name gender, only 3rd child of .....etc.

Once in NZ, quite often the name of a Ship was also included. Obvious in some cases, but not so obvious in others.

To add to the confusion they then, quite often, became known by a nick name.

Happy hunting - Alan SHARP.

[emanday]

Once in NZ, quite often the name of a Ship was also included.

One of my son-in-law's ancestors named his oldest son after his ship - Bromborough. It also happened to be the name of the village where they lived! (Then again, there is always the possibility that both the ship AND the son could have been named after the village )

[Currie]

Not quite the same thing but looking at the Hugh Wallis site http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.anc ... #PageTitle for middle names like Steedman in Fife, there are many more with that spelling rather than Stedman or Steadman. If you use the surname search on the SP home page you’ll see a similar pattern with those surnames.

South of the border on FreeBMD http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/cgi/search.pl Steedman as a surname is much less common than the other two. As a first name Stedman and Steadman has been used a fair bit but for Steedman there is only one individual, from the West Riding of Yorkshire, and he/she was born and died with that spelling.

Alan

[StewL]

Hi Andy
When you mentioned Steedman as a girls name it immediately brought to mind some odd girls names in my Laurie lot.
I have a Sydney Laurie (female ) born in 1865 to John Irvine Laurie and Henrietta Watson and their son Thomas named a lassie Gordon in 1897.
Contacts are not sure where the name came from. Our lang deid yins threw in some nice ones at times, dind't they?

[GeorgiaL]

I'm a bit late in posting this, but I just thought I'd mention that Sydney was originally normally a girl's name, and Shirley was always a boy's name. Charlotte Bronte wrote a novel called 'Shirley' and that was the name of the heroine, a fact that was considered unusual for the time, but it seems that after then girls were called Shirley and it fell out of fashion to name boys Shirley. One most recent man with that name was the wrestler 'Big Daddy', whose real name was Shirley Crabtree.
I have a great-aunt whose birth certificate has her as Robertina Colina!

[speleobat2]

Hi Georgia,

You're never too late to post on this topic! I just came across a possible female Longmuir relative who was named Keith Alica!

She's on the 1851 census with her father and then disappears. Haven't figured out yet whether she died or just dropped the Keith.

Carol