Hello -- Responding to Sue's question -- > Did the Huguenots have a naming pattern that was usually adhered to like the English and Irish? > This is a good question, Sue, and one that I've long thought I should delve into, particularly to clear up the tangle re: which Jacques was who. But, being born well before the computer age, I feel the only way I can do this is to get out pen and paper and draw the family tree the old-fashioned way, then have a good look at it to see what thoughts (if any <g>) occur. Which I will do. But in the meantime, some thoughts about Huguenot/Walloon naming patterns. Not sure if they had a naming pattern such as the one Sue described (not having done the afore-mentioned pencil/paper routine yet) but, like all others of that time period, at least in England (whether English or French), they tended to use the same common names over and over again. Which often causes headaches for us trying to sort them all out, centuries later. For example, for females: Mary (Marie), Elizabeth, Ann, Sara(h), Catherine, Susan(nah), Jane (Jeanne), etc. For males: John (Jean), James (Jacques), William (Guillaume), Henry, George, etc. If a child died, parents may have used the same name again, even more than once (hence the family with three sons named Abraham which I mentioned a couple of days ago). It's been my experience, though, that Thomas wasn't too popular a choice among French refugees, although it was among the native English. On the other hand, the refugees tended to use Pierre (Peter) which was not at all common in southeastern England so when I see Peter being used in a supposedly "all English" family, I start to speculate about possible Huguenot connections. Ditto the repeated use of Abraham, Isaac and/or Jacob as first names. Many French refugee families used these names repeatedly (again, I'm talking about southeastern England), often through centuries, long after their assimilation into general English culture. I've also encountered it a few times in families not connected to mine and in which no French ancestry is apparent. So I speculate once again on possible Huguenot/Walloon connections in those cases. For females, the names Judith and Esther may pop up regularly amongst refugees or their descendants but were not very common at all among non-refugees. I'm speaking in generalities, here, of course, and only based on what I've observed in my own research. Others may have observed different naming trends in different parts of the world. Lastly, I don't think the subject of naming patterns is complete without mentioning the Scots. At some points in the past, their naming pattern was pretty well adhered to (much more so than with the English, at least in my experience) and it was the one mentioned by Sue, ie. first son after paternal grandfather, second son after maternal grandfather, third son after father, first daughter after maternal grandmother, second daughter after paternal grandmother, third daughter after mother. (I then lose track of what happened after the birth of that sixth child...) Of course, they also used the same names over and over again, using the same names as the English (John, James, William, Elizabeth, Ann, Mary, etc) but adding a few uniquely their own (Duncan, Alexander, David, Andrew, Isabella, Helen, Janet, etc.) Thus endeth my treatise on naming patterns, perhaps without much light being shed. Anyone got any thoughts about this as it pertains to Huguenots/ Walloons? Andrea