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Pippin
15-04-2006, 1:06 AM
My Grandfather's Christian name was Harrodine. No living family know where this came from. How can I research this please?

sbaxter
15-04-2006, 4:58 AM
My Grandfather's Christian name was Harrodine. No living family know where this came from. How can I research this please?

It will not be easy to research this christian name without without atleast a little more information (i.e. dates). Some of the search engines will search on just this name but without further details you have nothing to compare the results to.

www.freebmd.org.uk gives the following results:

Jun 1891 - Death - Harrodine Coy, Doncaster
Dec 1899 - Marriage - Harrodine Womack, Doncaster
Jun 1902 - Birth - Harrodine Evans, Newton
Sep 1904 - Death - Harrodine Evans, Newton

HTH

Steve Baxter

AnnB
15-04-2006, 7:47 AM
My Grandfather's Christian name was Harrodine. No living family know where this came from. How can I research this please?
I would suggest that the name Harrodine could have been your grandfather's mother's maiden name - or the surname of any other female who married into the family. I know I was very surprised to find one of my husband's ancestors being christened Brett in the 1800's - it seemed far too modern - until I discovered that Brett was his grandmother's maiden name :cool:

It could also have been the surname of a friend or someone the family admired, the possibilities are endless.......

Best wishes
Ann

Peter Goodey
15-04-2006, 8:08 AM
It certainly sounds like a surname adopted as a forename. Since we don't even know the region, it's difficult to comment. The reasons and motivations will be specific to this family and only research will provide the answer.

Julie Tyrell
15-04-2006, 9:59 AM
It could also be part of a male name Harold and part the 'ine' from a number of female names Geraldine, Josephine. I think it probably from a surname but I do have female relatives whose name derive from the male name.

You may just have to dig deeper!! Good luck

Peter Goodey
15-04-2006, 10:46 AM
Ann is in Devon and better placed than I am to talk about west country naming practices. Suffice to say on one occasion I had to go back four generations in a Devon family to explain where the surname came from that was being used as a forename.

AnnB
15-04-2006, 11:21 AM
Ann is in Devon and better placed than I am to talk about west country naming practices. Suffice to say on one occasion I had to go back four generations in a Devon family to explain where the surname came from that was being used as a forename.
The instance I mentioned from my husband's family, took place in Essex. I have found that in Devon, the practice of using surnames as part of a child's forename was quite widespresd - I hadn't thought that there might be regional variations.

Best wishes
Ann

ChristineR
16-04-2006, 3:07 AM
I originally began researchng my husband's family to find out where the forename McMillan came from (used as a middle name for his father and great grandfather) It turned out to be the maiden name of his great great grandmother. Her husband also carried his mother's maiden name as a middle name. The McMillan was Australian born of Scottish /Irish descent, and the husband from Essex.

I have also found instances of where a person appears to have been named after a place.

Christine

Ron Leech
16-04-2006, 9:06 AM
Slight off topic.

I have always been curious about the given name Hutchinson because of Hutchinson Hart who lived in Crook and Billy Row and who features my wife’s tree. Doubly so, since I found a second one living nearby when I rechecked the 1881 census recently. This thread reminded me of this and I decided to research a little more.
As yardstick I looked for all with Hutchinson as a given name in the 1881 census. The distribution across the UK is as follows
East Anglia 6
Greater London East 1
Greater London West &nbsp%6nbsp; 6
Greater London East 1
Greater London West 1
Lancashire 5
London/Middlesex &n3B 1
Lancashire 5
London/Middlesex 3
Midlands East 5
Midlands West +sp; 3
Midlands East 5
Midlands West 3
Northern Borders 43
Scottish Highlands %6nbsp; 3
Northern Borders 43
Scottish Highlands 5
Scottish Lowlands 16
<SPAN lang=EN-GB>Southwest<SPAN style="mso-tab-count: 4"> &nbsp26nbsp; 5

Scottish Lowlands 16
Southwest 0

Wales and Monmouthshire 0

York 22


There are only the 2 Hutchinson Harts listed and they lived about 15 miles apart. Co-incidence, probably there is a difference of 13 years in age but as I have not found our chaps parents the mystery remains but they are unlikely to be directly related . For this name clearly this practice was most common around the Scottish borders and down to north Yorkshire.