JNO name of ancestor

[Mutley]

For a long time I hunted for Elijah only to find he was actually a she,
Elizah, wrongly enumerated as a son.

[Jan1954]

For a long time I hunted for Elijah only to find he was actually a she,
Elizah, wrongly enumerated as a son.

I had Pharaoh enumerated as Sarah - a daughter...

[Guy Etchells]

Basic rule for all family history research.
Never abbreviate any names or words, never extrapolate any abbreviation.

Only one person knows for sure what any abbreviation means, the person who made the abbreviation.
Cheers
Guy

[suedent]

For a long time I hunted for Elijah only to find he was actually a she,
Elizah, wrongly enumerated as a son.

My husband's gg-grandparents had Elizabeth Ann, Elisha & Eliza (twins who died as infants) and then his great-gran Eliza.

Can you just imagine what the enumerators & parish clerks made of that, especially considering how their father's strong Swedish accent must have sounded to someone from Sunderland!

[apthomas]

Funny that I used to think the same. My father's name was Jno. This was his full name (no middle name). Because he was of Lebanese descent I assumed that because his mother didn't know how to write and she was told to write his name on the birth certificate when he was born (1935) that this was how it came out. But after some research, I discovered that it was once a fairly common name particularly in Britain. There are two, I believe, signers of the American Declaration of Independence whose names are Jno. So this is not necessarily a typo nor a short for any name (I doubt that John is in need of being shortened!). But as my father used to tell others when they questioned the name....it simply meant that he was JNO -- Just Not Ordinary! And I can assure all, it couldn't have been any more fitting.

[DianaCanada]

Jno. goes back to the days of Latin use in Catholic Churches - it is abbreviation for the latinzed version of John - Johannes. And, as Jane is a feminine form of John (as is Ann, shortened from Johanna and subsequently Hannah), a Jane may very well be shortened the same way, although an "a" on the end seems more logical.
And just to add fuel to a fire somewhere - I maintain Jack is just the anglicized spelling of Jacques, which came in with the Normans, and it is not a nickname for John. Somehow James in English evolved from Jacobus, the Latin version and it's a mystery to me as it does not seem a logical "change".

[limeyrr]

My grandmother was Mary Elizabeth but she was called "Polly" for the whole of her 96 years.

I hear where your coming from. It's almost like the child rebels against the name their given and chooses their own. My grandfather was named Cyril Claude, doesn't surprise me he went be the name of Bob for his whole life.

[DianaCanada]

I am aware that Jack is used as a nickname for John but I don't think it was that way originally - and I am referring to 1000 years ago when the Normans brought many new names into England - some Biblical and some not, in many ways supplanting the Anglo-Saxon names. To the Anglo-Saxon ears, the sound Jack would have been more natural than the French Jacques. Over time Jack disappeared as a common name and seems to have been revived late in the Victorian era (along with a lot of other names that had been out of widespread use for centuries - Alfred, Arthur, Reginald, Maud, Edith, etc.) It seems very likely Jack was mistakenly associated with John. It really isn't a shortening, as they are both 1 syllable. The absence of a common surname like Jameson or Jimson in England but the very common name of Jackson points to Jack being the English form of Jacques. Surnames were commonly formed in the 12th century, and many of the popular boy's names were by then influenced by the Normans (often via the Bible) and although some Anglo-Saxon names survived, they were outnumbered as given names.

[Chris Doran]

I'm currently keying some registers where John is routinely spelled Jhon. There are Jhoannas too, but Jane is spelled without the aitch. I haven't looked forward to see when they stop doing this -- I'm only 3/4 way through the 14th century!

[strawberrymivvy]

Then of course there's Sally for Sarah, Molly for Mary, Lily for Elizabeth...

And in my own bizarre family I have all of the above (siblings) plus in the same family an Albert who was always known as Joe, a Frederick who was Rick (that at least I can understand) and a Maurice who was Dick! Sarah/Sally was also known as Lal, but I've never heard that anywhere else and assume it's a "babyfied" version of Sally