52 Ancestors Week 47: The Name's the Same

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 47:

The theme for Week 47 is “The Name’s the Same.” Chances are there are some people in your tree who have the same name as someone else. This is a good week to write about the people who carry a family name or a time when you’ve had to sort out two unrelated people who happen to have the same name. 

That’s a lot of James.

 What’s in a name? Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Would a name like “Anthony” be passed down through the generations because an ancestor was named Antonio or Antoine? In my family tree, of course they would. Names have been passed down for centuries. The last time this topic came up I talked about all the people named “Robert” in my tree. Admittedly , that was quite a wild ride. This week will be all about Paolo!

 When I first heard the name Paolo, the name honestly reminded me of a character in “The Godfather” or something. There’s always a mob guy named Paolo or “Paulie”. Not every mobster is going to be called “Nicky the Nose”, you know. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that my third great- grandfather was named Paolo. It gets better. His last name was “Coppola”.  Of course I would have two of the most common Italian last names in my tree! For those of you keeping track, the other one is “Tedesco”.

 I don’t really have a lot on Paolo to be honest due to record availability and everything. Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together. He was the son of Francesco Coppola and an unknown woman and was born around 1843. He had a brother named Giovanni and a sister named Caterina. Both names were also passed down through the generations, by the way. The Coppola family is a textbook case of Italian naming conventions where someone in the family is named after a parent or grandparent in a specific pattern. The first masculine child would be named after the paternal grandfather and so on.

 Paolo married Rosa Suverato and had my second great-grandmother, Caterina and her siblings Paolo and Concetta. I don’t know if they had any more children. Chances are they did because Italians tended to have large families in those days. Some names would even be repeated in case a child unfortunately passed away before their first birthday. When you do research in Italy, you should keep track of the names used more than once!

 Anyway, Caterina, Paolo and Concetta all had children who had the same name as their grandfather. Caterina, though, was the only one of her siblings who stayed in Italy. She and her husband Marco had a son named Paolo in August 1896. Concetta and Paolo moved to Haverhill, Massachusetts and started having children named Paul, which is the anglicized version of the name Paolo. Here’s where research gets a little tricky….especially when the father and the son have the same name.

When Paolo came to America, he went by the name “Paul” in order to assimilate. His son Paul was born in 1909 in the city of Haverhill to Paolo and his first wife, Lena. He was the oldest of sixteen children and even he had a son named Paul! It’s nice to see the naming tradition continue on another continent! Too bad this can also lead to headaches if you aren’t a careful researcher.

I’m not going to say I’ve never made a mistake. However, when you look at documents like draft cards you always need to check when someone was born if they have the same name. Older men had old men’s draft cards and sometimes they look similar to the regular cards. Censuses can at least help you figure out who is who and which Paolo/Paul is who.

Thankfully,  birth records can really help you figure out people who have the same names. It can be really tricky when someone has the name Paul and a common Italian last name. At least a common name isn’t always common in one area.

Thankfully, Concetta’s son Paul was a lot easier to research! He was the son of Concetta and her husband Vincenzo Papatolo and was born in Haverhill in 1916.  It was easier researching him because the last name isn’t very common in Haverhill. The only thing that confuses me is how some members of the family spell the last name “Papatola” when documents in Italy spell it like “Papatolo”. It might have been a personal choice since no last names were changed at Ellis Island. 

Paul and Lorraine

Paul married Lorraine Pouliot in 1942 and they had a large family including a daughter that they named Paula. I don’t think that counts as a “Paul”. But it was so close! Paula is a DNA match and sadly she passed away in 2023. She went by the screen name “the great nana” and according to cousins who knew her, she really was a great nana!

She was also an avid Patriots fan and an education assistant. Can’t go wrong with that. Her obituary is really well written. Check it out: https://www.seacoastonline.com/obituaries/pprt0631672

I really wish I was able to talk  with Paula. I sent her a message or two on Ancestry when she showed up as a match to my father, great-aunt and I. To each their own, I guess. There’s no sense in dwelling on something you can’t control. I do talk to other relatives of Paula and they all said nice things about her! That’s good enough!

That’s pretty much all I can say about all of the people named Paolo/Paul in my tree. Like Giuseppe, Concetta, Maria and Giovanni, the names were passed down through time and anglicized once they arrived in America. If you study Italian records, the same names are going to pop up every once in a while. When that happens, you should be mindful of the dates, places and circumstances because a Paul Coppola on a death record could easily be the son or the father. You never know.

See ya next time!

P.s. As for the original Paolo from the early 19th century, I still need to figure out who his mother was. I think I’d need his marriage record. I’m 100% sure his father was Francesco thanks to dna evidence.