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In the prompt for this week’s #52Ancestors challenge Amy Johnson Crow asks us to think about an ancestor who, “had a name that was popular/trendy at the time … [or] a name that keeps getting used in your family tree … [or] an ancestor named after someone famous.”

I’ve written before about the number of times the name James SANDERSON pops up in my tree. I’ve gone some way to unpicking who is who, but need to do some more research on that in order to be sure of my facts in going back any further. That’s also a prompt for me to contact my dad’s cousin and see what she remembers.

On the BENNETT side of the family, the names Fred or Thomas/Tom, or combinations thereof, pop up with a certain frequency, but I haven’t yet seen them go back very far – Fred seems to have been a popular name in the late 1920s and early 1930s (and possibly made a revival, although not in my family, in the 1990s). Tom has been carried on by one branch of the family – Thomas/Tom seems like one of those names which is timeless.

This week I decided to try to unpick one particular relationship so that I could add some facts to my tree. I decided to create a separate tree so that I could work on it, and perhaps get things wrong initially, without affecting my main tree. It was a fascinating exercise. It’s a branch of the family which relates to the TITTERINGTON name. I’m working backwards from my grandmother, to her father and grandmother – getting any further is proving challenging; my great grandfather was illegitimate and there are various theories about who his father may have been (another mystery I’m hoping to solve one day). But the fact that he was illegitimate meant he took on his mother’s surname, TITTERINGTON, something about which I’m strangely pleased. Apart from anything else, the fact that a BOTTOMLEY married a TITTERINGTON has provided some amusement for friends!

But back to popular names … in trying to work out how the TITTERINGTON and WRATHALL families came to be connected, I worked back from my godmother (originally a WRATHALL). I knew that the connection was some sort of cousin relationship in my grandmother’s generation, and have now confirmed that. It took me on a fascinating journey (although some might say down a genealogical rabbit hole). Things that I remember my mum telling me began to fall into place. And I discovered what to me was an unusual given name – Tempest. It has made it relatively easy to track back through the generations of one set of somewhat remote ancestors, aided by the fact that many of the family were farmers who stayed around the same area. And it may also have solved the mystery of where the given name Jennet comes from (I recall someone showing me a tree they’d worked on with the name Jennet and thinking it was a lovely name, but this was many years ago and my memory needed a nudge).

Tempest. What a wonderful name. I decided to explore the origins. My first port of call was the somewhat ubiquitous search engine – our good friend Google – and I asked it to find “meaning of first names uk”.

The first result (Behind the Name) told me that Tempest is a feminine name. Back I went to the censuses and birth and marriage records – yes, Tempest was definitely a name given to boys in this family. The site tells us that the origin is, “From the English word meaning “storm”. It appears in the title of William Shakespeare‘s play The Tempest (1611)”, and that its usage is “English (Rare)” So far, I’ve traced the name back to the 1700s (although I have yet to confirm all this with actual certificates, etc).

The Oxford Dictionary of First Names (2nd ed) says:

Transferred use of the surname, which most probably originated as a nickname for someone with a stormy temperament, from the Middle English and Old French vocabulary word tempeste, from Latin tempestas. This was used in Yorkshire as a given name from the 1570s onwards, almost always in families with some connection with the Tempest family of Broughton Hall. In the 20th century the name has sometimes been adopted independently from the vocabulary word, especially as a female name.

Oxford Dictionary of First Names

I have yet to discover a connection to Broughton Hall, which is some 18 miles or so from where the family lived (about a six hour walk). It’s not impossible – the family are from near Clitheroe (Slaidburn, Waddington, West Bradford, an area which has fallen in and out of Lancashire and Yorkshire over the decades).

Babynames.net confirms that the name “…is derived from a Medieval English word ‘tempeste’, which means ‘a violent storm’. The name started as a nick name for anyone having a blustery temperament.” Were parents predicting the nature of the new-born child? (I once met someone from Malawi named Express, apparently down to his parents’ belief in the speed of his running.) Or perhaps basing the name on what they’d experienced in the first few days afterwards?! Or simply using a family name with little thought to its meaning? Another baby name site, babycentre, lists numerous versions of the name, but again credits it as a girl’s name and suggests it has French origins.

I did eventually find a site, babynames.com, which referred to the name Tempest as “gender neutral”.

An amended search, “meaning of the name tempest”, yielded a few different results. One site, nameberry.com, says the name is “both a boy’s name and a girl’s name of English origin”. It lists it as a name for both boys and girls, but gives it slightly different meanings: for a girl it’s “turbulent, stormy”, while for a boy it gives the meaning as “storm” (which would probably match what we think of as a tempest now). The site also warns that some people may see it as “asking for trouble”!

House of Names goes into more detail about the origin of the name as a surname (see above where the Oxford dictionary refers to it as a “[t]ransferred use of the surname”), again linking it back to Henry Roger TEMPEST of Broughton Hall. It claims that, “Soon after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the name Tempest was recognized on the island as a name for a person with a quick or furious temper.”

How much can we really know about the origins of names? BENNETT (which is now usually seen as a surname, but can also be used as a given name) is said to originate from Benedict – you can see how this could be the case. There are names which reflect the trade or profession of individuals. I’m looking forward to seeing how far back I can go tracing the name Tempest. It will take me a long way from the main focus of my research – but it’s fun!