Observations on 19th-Century Haitian Women’s Names

A few notes on my travels through the Haitian Genealogical Archives:

Gertrude Kernésie Etienne Gabriel, a bride in 1850–antecedents of the Ken- and Kern- names popular today?

Reminders that a small settlement of Poles were the only white people allowed to stay in Haiti:

• jeanne elizabeth roseliska daguerre
• louise elise céniska alvarès
• marguerite orzinska beaufossé
• marie claire lesinska gara
• marie elizabethe duverger, nicknamed dorliska
• marie françoise dorliska audigé
• ursule lusinska pierre

Parents pulled out all the stops:

• clotilde adélaïde louise elisabeth
• marie louise anthiope pierre
• anne jeanne madeleine augustin noëmie
• anne marie altagrâce eglantine
• claire améllie hercélia lathoison
• julienne philippina sevilla hollanderia

But most women’s names were strung together from a small pool of old standbys, leading to increasingly bewildering abbreviations:

• marie joseph a. l. a. s.
• anne marie marguerite l. s. a. d.
• anne marie j. c. r. m. a. r. p.
• marie m. l. e. a. r. e. i. v. t.

I’m going to have to decide how to analyze the data: first names only? First names and middle names added into the same pool? Both first and middle names analyzed, but in separate pools? Frequency of individual names, regardless of how they’re combined in compound names?

For now, some initial results with unsorted data:

• marie louise, 106, 2.69%
• marie françoise, 90, 2.28%
• elizabeth, 77, 1.95%
• marie joseph, 65, 1.65%
• marie, 61, 1.55%
• rose, 60, 1.52%
• marie rose, 55, 1.39%
• marie catherine, 49, 1.24%
• marie jeanne, 48, 1.22%
• jeanne, 43, 1.09%
• anne, 39, 0.99%
• marie thérèse, 34, 0.86%
• marie anne, 34, 0.86%
• marie magdelaine, 33, 0.84%
• françoise, 32, 0.81%
• margueritte, 31, 0.79%
• adélaïde, 30, 0.76%
• louise, 28, 0.71%
• félicité, 27, 0.68%
• généviève, 26, 0.66%

The number of women whose names started with:

• Marie: 1, 748 out of 3,944, or 44%
• Anne: 181
• Louise: 124
• Rose: 146
• Jeanne: 150
• Adélaïde: 55