Is there something I don't know about the names Theresia and Rosina?
I have just encountered yet another instance of the same person being named Theresia in one record and Rosina in another. This one is in the Lutheran registers of Felsőlövő, Vas county, Hungary (now Oberschützen, Burgenland, Austria), but I've seen this phenomenon in German-language Lutheran records from Sopron, Moson, and Győr counties as well.
Child's birth/baptism, entered as Theresia (number 80, Sep 26, 1838): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS54-WQJ8-6?i=50&cat=104927
Child's death and burial, entered as Rosina (number 71, Sep 29 and 30, 1838, age 3 days): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS54-HSPY-Y?i=489&cat=104927
It's the same place (Oberschützen), same parents (Joseph Kirnbauer and Barbara Neubauer versus Joseph and Barbara Kirnbauer), same officiant (Kaplan Ritter), and the dates match exactly, so it's definitely the same baby, but she's baptised as Theresia and buried as Rosina.
It's always Theresia and Rosina.
What is it about those two names? What am I missing?
Kommentare
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I did a quick search on naming practices, there wasn't a lot of elaboration, especially not for that time period. Is it possible, the child had a patron saint name, but went by a name her family would have called her? And, when she died, they used the familiar name instead of the saints name? It isn't uncommon to have two to three names, and only go by one of those names.
Just a thought...
@Mckenna Cooper do you know have any information on naming practices? Or if there is something different happening here?
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I don't know. There doesn't seem to be any saint with both names or a name day with both. This thread points out that a nickname for Therezia was Rezi and a nickname for Rozina was Rozi, so it's possible that they were just used interchangeably since they look similar. At the very least you are not alone. It may have been a specific local tradition too.
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The WikiTree discussion was also me, but I've now been pointed to a (German-language) discussion (started nine years ago) on Ahnenforschung.net, where people mention Rosina/Theresia interchanges from all over; the only thing they have in common is the German language. The discussion agreed that it has to come down to a diminutive (call name) that's the same or very similar. People also mentioned some other pairs that they have encountered:
Magdalena and Helena (Lena, Leni)
Eucharius and Carolus (Carl)
Dorothea and Gertrud
Adelheid and Ottilie (Addel)
Kilian and Aegidius (Gilg)
Marianna and Emilia
The name in parentheses is the nickname in common, if known. For Rosina/Theresia, the discussion's most common hypothesis is Rosl~Resl, but I'm not convinced that the different vowels would've been confused like this. (They're as different as "boys" and "bays".) I'd be highly interested in any family letters or similar evidence that could point to a more likely candidate. (Nicknames are very hard to find in official records.)
One commenter said that in the records she's seen, Rosina is almost always recorded as Euphrosina. Everyone else said they'd never seen that. I haven't, either, but it opens up a whole new set of candidate nicknames... (Hmm. In Hungarian, there's Trézsi for Theresia and Fruzsi for Euphrosina, but Fruzsi I think would be much more likely to be confused with Zsuzsi = Susanna, and besides, I haven't seen any instances of Fruzsina in 18th-19th century records.)
So, modifying my question: does anyone have any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) about what a 19th-century Theresia and/or Rosina would've actually been called in everyday life?
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