Howie,

You don't say where your great-grandfather and his father are buried.
This particular naming pattern was almost universal among Dutch Ashkenazim.
A son's middle name was always his father's first name. And if a son was
named after his grandfather, then the son's first name was therefore the
same as his father's middle name.

Incidentally, the same applied to daughters. The daughter's middle name
was often her father's first name, even though that name was masculine.
So for example, my great-grandmother's name was Kitty Nathan Wins,
daughter of Nathan Levie Wins.

This naming pattern originates >from the Jewish custom of using patronymics,
i.e. X ben/bat Y, which predated the use of surnames.
--
Harold Zvi Rabbie
Los Gatos, California
http://members.home.net/hzrabbie


<JEDI318@aol.com> wrote in message news:90.b857f68.2733190f@aol.com...