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During pioneer times was there a pattern or custom that parents followed in assigning a given name to the first born son, or to sons in general? In the early 1800's, is it possible to make an educated guess as to the given name of an ancestor by studying the frequency of given names assigned to his male descendants over the following three or four generations? I have reached a dead end in my genealogical research, and I'm looking for meaningful clues to help me bridge the data gap.