Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: A Fearless Female Blog Prompt

From Randy over at Genea-Musings: 

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): 

1)  Read Lisa Alzo's blog post Back for a Fourth Year: Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women's History Month on her blog, The Accidental Genealogist.

2)  Choose one of her daily blog prompts from the list (this is March 9th, do that one if you don't want to choose another), and write about it.

3)  Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook post or a Google+ post.

Here's mine:

I am going to choose the blog prompt from March 3rd:   "Do you share a first name with one of your female ancestors? Perhaps you were named for your great-grandmother, or your name follows a particular naming pattern. If not, then list the most unique or unusual female first name you’ve come across in your family tree."

I was named for my Aunt Elizabeth Taylor Tapley, who was married to my Uncle Russ (John Russell Tapley).   She was the sweetest soul, and I am proud to carry her name.  

There are other Elizabeths in my ancestry, as you can imagine.  Here are just the ones in my direct line:

Elizabeth Rebecca (Beckie) Page Tapley - my paternal great-grandmother

Elizabeth (maiden name unknown) Tapley - my 2nd great-grandmother (married to George Washington Tapley)

Elizabeth Scoggins Page - another 2nd great-grandmother

Ann Elizabeth Spruill Swain - my 4th great-grandmother

Plus several great and grand aunts and many cousins.  As a matter of fact there are a total of 131 women in my database of 5,533 people who have the name Elizabeth!  That is about 2.4%!  

The most interesting thing I noticed is that I do not have any in my direct line on my mother's side... or from my "northern" roots.  So is naming daughters Elizabeth a mostly "southern" practice?

The name Elizabeth has been popular for hundreds of years.  It’s the only girls’ name to have remained in the Top 25 (okay, 26) throughout entire recorded American baby-naming history, since 1880. (http://nameberry.com/blog/elizabeth-the-name-that-has-everything)  It was the 11th most popular name in the United States still in 2011!  So it is not surprising that I have so many of them in my family tree.  You probably have a good share of them, too!