The significance of the name Joseph

Victoria Louise Altomare

The significance of the name Joseph

I'm researching my family who lived in Ransart in the 1700-1800. Many of the their names, both male and female, include the name Joseph. If this name was used it usually appears just before the surname, i.e. Marie Francoise Joseph Cornil or Jean Baptiste Joseph Suain. Also, since they use it so much what would be the determining factor when they didn't use it?

 

thank you

Adrien Kintziger

Some of the determinants are derivates of mandatory lists of names in use of the census and Church

registration, some of the registration procedures were an obligation of the Church ; some of the census-but in the latter when it came to names=>there was a positive list that provided all legal possible names.

exept the family name.

To give an example , when i was born in 1959 , my father wanted to give me the name 'Adriaan' , but both church an census only accepted 'Adrien'. That was on their list.

So given the time frame, and the fact that also the Church had a positive list;Full of biblical names like

 

Say, Johannes Baptiste Joseph for "Jean Baptiste Joseph" in this Johannes is the apostel , Baptiste is the baptised one, and Joseph comes from Joseph and Maria.The more Catholic your parents were,and the more their municipality was full catholic, the more biblical names were attached.The lower on the social ladder,living outside the parish,not going to the church ;=lesser names from the bible in the

name.

 

Further consideration, before 1830 Belgium did not exist,and was part of the Netherlands.

So if you want to feed your skills on Dutch names and naming you can find a lot on the web.

Adrie

GilbertStaepels1

In the 18th century, the "low lands" (Netherlands) were divided in two regions: the north (present day The Netherlands) was protestant; the south (Belgium) remained Roman Catholic. It was a custom that a child bore the names of the godfather and the godmother. In your case Marie Francoise Joseph, Marie was the first name of the child, Françoise is the first name of the godmother and Joseph the first name of the godfather. In most cases the godfather and godmother were grandparents, uncles or aunts.

The name Jean Baptiste is mostly regarded as a first name (other examples are Jean Marie) or Marie Christine)

I hope this helps.