You know how authors often choose character names from cemeteries?

[CormoranStrike]

JK Rowling is just one famous example, there’s a cemetery at Greyfriars in Edinburgh where you can ‘meet’ many of her Harry Potter characters.

Anyway, on my walk today I went to a cemetery near me with parts dating back 200 years.

Many if the names are similar to ones you would see today, but I picked out a few I loved, most almost or well over a century on from their deaths. I do like to read these names and in some way know these people are not forgotten.

My favourites today include:

Myrtle Gwendoline
Betsy Brown
Christian Lewison
Hume Easton
John Kindred
Nancy Pagan
Dotsy Wyness

Interestingly, Christian - not Christina - was a popular name for women a century or so back

Portugal street, Lincoln Square?

Have nothing to add but love this thread!:-)

@CormoranStrike it's def Portugal Street, and i think I can make out Lincoln's Fields but spelt differently. I think that link I posted may be him. Ooh I'm all excited now.

Oh @Okki I wonder how he ended up here, approx 20 miles outside of Edinburgh.

Is there a local newspaper archive you could look at. Many of them are online now?

In a church near me there are quite a few females called Lettice! Love it!

One of the names in your original post is the name of one of my ancestors! It could even be the same person. Seeing their name on a list of the names you loved has strangely brightened my day

@CormoranStrike I do feel the need to ask seeing as you mentioned JK - does your posting name appear on a gravestone somewhere?

Oh @namechangers - where was your ancestor from?

@CormoranStrike the only info we have is Scotland, no idea of the specific area I’m afraid!

There are some really interesting names on a war memorial near me:

Tempest Crabbe
Horatio Hope
Cosmo Romilly
Urbane Clark
Lancelot Harry Pearce

John Kindred sounds like a news reporter name. I can imagine him saying "John Kindred, BBC News, London".

@namechangers if you want to tell me which name it was I shall photograph the headstone for you today

@okkii have never actually been to the graveyard, but def worth checking out

We (dog, baby and me) are off for a walk in a minute, I shall look for some more!

Loving this thread

Jabez is a great name. There is a Jabez Tunnicliff buried in a local cemetery...he founded the Band of Hope. And was one of 22 children. His poor mother!
I love cemeteries. So much social history. The Guinea graves fascinate me.

There is a headstone tucked round the back of our church. The couple buried there lost six children altogether, three in the space of a fortnight!
We forget how lucky we are these days!

I sometimes google unusual names from gravestones and find out more about the people within them. I’ve sent photos of NZ war graves in our local cemetery to their descendants after ascertaining they are the right people.

I discovered the grave of a woman - an only child - who died in her 90s in the 1970s and buried with her parents. She was an unmarried and childless doctor -I found an old obituary for her online and she sounded absolutely wonderful.

I wanted to tell her someone was thinking of her in case she had slipped out of family history with no direct descendants. I would love to research and write about the forgotten people like her for a local audience. Perhaps one day.

In Ancestry websites, you can sometimes find the email addresses of people researching the family history of people whose graves you may find in wild corners of cemeteries. You can reunite them if you handle it sensitively and aren’t weirded out by it. I have only had positive responses.

I have a lot of female Christians in my tree. Mainly from the very North of Scotland and the Island.

DH’s 3x great grandfather was Lazarus . He came from Poland and was a pawnbroker .
My paternal Grandfather was Ferdinand , an exotic name in a field of boring names . ( Dob circa 1896 )

I walk by Bertha Gerturde on the way to work

There’s a Giblett Forest in Western Australia. It’s pronounced with a soft G like Gibbs, Gibbons, Gibson.

I'm surprised Septimus didn't make the HP books.

I'm another who loves to look and read and remember these are peoples with lives and histories who may have had an impact on the life I know today.

Near me is an old abbey and there's a graveyard around the back of the walk. It's a military cemetery. Rows and rows of graves of men who fought for our country. It's harrowing yet I am proud. So many young men at 18/19/20 etc who's lives ended too soon.