20 names, 87 people

The forenames

In this family a forename is inherited property. It travels through daughters as reliably as a surname travels through sons, it survives a change of surname, and it goes on being given long after the person it came from is dead.

Why this is not decoration

In this family a forename is inherited property. It travels through daughters as reliably as a surname travels through sons, it survives a change of surname, and it survives the death of the person it came from. Three times it has also produced an error in this archive, because two people of one name in two generations look exactly alike in an index. AND IT IS EVIDENCE. Read carefully it says which family a child belongs to: OCKERT JOHANNES STEPHANUS runs four generations out of a single marriage and is not a Booysen name at all, and the eldest son of a disputed man is called DAVID SCHALK, which is the third argument on the disputed page for a father this site did not give him. 15 SEPTEMBER 2026: and for the first time two of these derivations are PROVED rather than asserted — DAVID SCHALK by counting it through three printed volumes, and WILLEM HERMANUS by finding both halves of it in one household in 1809. A third, JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA, identified a gravestone.

Read these lists and the family's own idea of itself is visible in a way no document states: who was worth remembering, whose side of the family was being honoured, and which relationships mattered enough to be carried for a century.

The first list is the strangest. The name this family has repeated for five generations belongs to a man with no blood relation to any of them.

Five generations, it does not come from this family at all, and it is now traced to its source

Willem Hermanus

The name enters through a step-relation with no blood tie to any Booyzen, and is still being given to children a century and a half later. Since 15 September both halves of it have a man behind them.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Willem Slier	of Hamburg, m. 1780	THE SOURCE OF THE FIRST HALF. Anna Catharina Slier's father, married Anna Catharina Fortman at the Cape on 19 November 1780. His grandson carries his forename.
Hermanus Pietersen	d. bef. Mar 1817	THE SOURCE OF THE SECOND HALF, and until 15 September this archive had him and his son as one man. Anna Catharina Slier's first husband, married 5 April 1807. His own parents were unknown to the book.
Willem Hermanus Pietersen	bapt. 12 Mar 1809	THEIR GRANDSON AND SON, and the first person to carry the whole name — Willem for his mother's father, Hermanus for his own. Godfather at the 1851 Graaff-Reinet font, and half-brother to Johanna Catharina Mountjoy.
Willem Hermanus “William Henry” Booyzen	1851–1905	Named at that font for the godfather standing over it. Generation four of the direct line.
Willem Hermanus Booyzen of Indwe	c. 1886	The miner. An eighth child this archive did not know it had until the register turned him up.
Willem Hermanus Booyzen of Dugmore	b. 31 May 1908	Baptised at Indwe, entered “onecht”, his grandmother standing godmother.
Willem Hermanus “Willy” Booyzen	1925–1996	Eldest of the Johannesburg family.
William Herman Daschner	b. c. 1915	And out through a daughter into a third surname.

THIS SET USED TO BEGIN WITH THE WRONG MAN. It opened on “Willem Hermanus Pieterzen, d. bef. 1817, Anna Catharina Slier's FIRST husband”, a person assembled out of two documents that spell him differently — the 1817 marriage register's HARMANUS PIETERZE and the 1840 death notice's WILLIAM PIETERSEN. De Villiers's volume 3 separates them: the husband is HERMANUS, and WILLEM HERMANUS is the boy baptised in 1809. The page's own argument survives and improves. The name still enters through a step-relation with no Booyzen blood in it — AND HALF OF IT IS GERMAN, from a man of Hamburg who never saw the Karoo.

Counted in print, and it is a van der Merwe name

David Schalk

Three men in this archive carry it and the first of them is the child born the year after a van der Merwe married into the line. The claim is testable, so it was tested.

Who	When	What they are to the name
David Schalk van der Merwe	bapt. 10 Oct 1790	HER BROTHER. One of the two candidates for where the name comes from — and on the other candidate, the family tree's version, he is her FATHER instead. Either way he stands one step from her.
Anna Maria van der Merwe	bapt. 5 Oct 1788	THE DOOR IT COMES THROUGH. Baptised fourteen days after the man she married. Her son is the first David Schalk in this surname.
David Schalk Booijsen	bapt. 4 Jan 1807	THE FIRST, and the only David Schalk in the whole first volume of the Cape genealogies — the volume that holds every Booijsen de Villiers recorded.
David Schalk Booysen	b. 9 Jun 1848	The second. Named for his grandfather, four decades on.
David Schalk Booijzen the younger	c. 1889	The third, youngest on his mother's 1900 notice.
David Kolbe Booyzen	m. 1921	And it survives beside a second borrowed name: he hyphenated Kolbe onto Booysen and used it as his surname at Port Elizabeth.

THE COUNT IS THE ARGUMENT. The three volumes of de Villiers were downloaded as text and the string DAVID SCHALK counted in each. PART 1 — which contains the entire BOOIJSEN genealogy — holds it EXACTLY ONCE, and that once is the child of 1807. PART 2 holds it FIFTEEN TIMES, THIRTEEN OF THEM INSIDE THE VAN DER MERWE SECTION: 1738, 1739, 1761, 1787, 1790, 1791, 1797, 1800, 1804. A name that appears once in a family and thirteen times in the family that married into it is not a coincidence, and this is the only derivation on this page that can be put as a number.

Five generations of women, across four surnames — and it is not a Barry name

Catherine Maria Sophia

This archive called it “a Barry name that outlives the Barry surname by eighty years”. The 1848 font says otherwise: it is a KOLBE name, and the woman it comes from never married a Booyzen.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Catharine Sophia Maria Kolbe	godmother, 1848	Stood at the Graaff-Reinet font on 13 November 1848 for her sister's son Henry James Barry, entry 603, written out in full by the clerk. Eleven years before the first Catherine Maria Sophia was born.
Catherine Maria Sophia “Kathleen” Barry	1859–1940	The last Barry of the surname in this line. She married a Booyzen in 1879.
Catharina Maria Sophia Booysen	1891–1946	Baptised at Barkly Oost, “named for her mother entire”. She married a Daschner at Indwe.
Catherine Mary Sophia Daschner	a major by 1942	Her eldest daughter — the third of the name, and the second surname it has crossed.
Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen	1929–2013	And back into the Booyzens, on the direct line, the hinge to the Lerena archive.

A fifth carries it too: Catharina Mary Sophia Däschner, born at Indwe on 11 March 1909, baptised there that May.

The spine name — five men over a hundred and fifty years

Petrus Jacobus

1788, 1812, 1839, 1904, 1934. Two of them are on the direct line and three are not, and an index cannot tell them apart.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Petrus Jacobus Booysen	1788–1876	Generation six. Died at Brakfontein, district Rustenburg, with nothing to leave.
Petrus Jacobus Booysen	1812–1884	Generation five. The farmer at Zevenfontein who signed his wife's death notice.
Petrus Jacobus Booysen	b. 10 Sep 1839	Third child on the 1863 death notice.
Petrus Jacobus Booyzen	b. 29 Dec 1904	Baptised with a Z at Middelburg, a year before the Indwe sheet spelled it with an S.
Petrus Jacobus “Piet” Booyzen	1934–2003	Youngest of the Johannesburg family.

Three of these share one page on this site, because merging them silently would be worse than saying so.

The name that made this archive get something wrong

Jan Gerhardus Lodewicus

An uncle and a nephew, both of this name, both connected to an estate filed in 1885.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Gerthardus Lodewikus Booysen	no dates	Generation seven — the top of the male line, and the source of the name.
Jan Gerthardus Lodewikus Booijsen	1818–1885	His grandson. Fifth on the 1876 Sterfkennis; died at Vaalbank, district Lichtenburg. THE ESTATE IS HIS.
Jan Gerhardus Lodewicus Booysen	b. 4 Dec 1855	His great-grandson, seventh on the 1863 death notice. This archive gave him the uncle's estate and a death date to match. Both are withdrawn.
Jan Gerhardus Lodewicus Booyzen	aged 2	And a third, who died in a concentration camp — of the western Transvaal family this archive spent months insisting was somebody else's.

The error is on the corrections page. A year was read off a file number, written into a man's life as a death date, and then cited back as though it were evidence.

Three names handed over entire, in the house next door

Judith Cornelia Theresia

The same mechanism as David Schalk, in the same generation, one household along — and it is what let a Johannesburg gravestone be identified from a genealogical code.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Judith Cornelia Theresia Viljoen	bapt. 22 Oct 1782	She marries in. Sister of the Hercules Albertus Viljoen who married a Booijsen three months earlier the same year.
Jan Jonathan Booijsen	bapt. 11 Jul 1779	Her husband, married 28 May 1797, and brother of the Petrus Jacobus at the head of this archive's line.
Judith Cornelia Theresia Booijsen	bapt. 16 Aug 1807	Their sixth child, carrying her mother's three names entire. She is b3c4d5e6 — the code cited on a gravestone at Bezuidenhout Park, Johannesburg, photographed in 1989, which is how she was identified at all.
Judith Cornelia Etresia Bezuidenhout	b. 30 Oct 1831	Her daughter, on the same stone, with the middle name worn down to Etresia in one generation.

A BROTHER AND A SISTER MARRIED A SISTER AND A BROTHER, THREE MONTHS APART IN 1797. Magdalena Booijsen married Hercules Albertus Viljoen on 26 February; her brother Jan Jonathan married his sister Judith Cornelia Theresia on 28 May. Thirty-one years later a son of the third sibling married a daughter of the first. This page argues that a forename is inherited property; here are two households exchanging it in both directions inside a single year.

Six forenames cross into a family called Daschner

The Barry names, after the Barrys

The surname stops in 1859. The names do not stop at all.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Catherine Mary Sophia Daschner	eldest daughter	Kathleen Barry's own name, third generation running.
Margaret Wilhelmina Elizabeth Jeanette van Jaarsveld	born Daschner	The Barry name that also runs down the Pretorius side and reaches Maggie Booyzen in 1926.
William Herman Daschner	b. c. 1915	For his grandfather Willem Hermanus.
Richard Peter Daschner	b. 8 May 1922	For his great-uncle Richard Peter Barry of Manorowen.
Henry James Daschner	b. 25 Feb 1932	For his uncle Henry James Booyzen.
George Downing Daschner	born and buried 1925	AND GEORGE DOWNING TOO — buried at Brixton, Johannesburg, the year he was born. A second of the name died in 1998.

Six of eleven children. When the Cape Rebel roll produces a Richard Peter Barry of Jerpoint, the name is evidence of a family and not of an individual — and this archive still marks that identification unproven.

A dead child's name given again — and the only time this archive can watch it happen

Carolina Isabella Margaretha Aletta

Fourteen months old when she died. Four years later her parents used the name again, and it is still running two generations on.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Carolina Deybella Margrietta Alletta Botha	c. 1844 – 1902	The grandmother. Born in the district of Cradock, died at her own house at Dordrecht.
Carolina Isabella Margaretha Aletta Mountjoy	15 Aug 1896 – 25 Oct 1897	Baptised at Dordrecht three weeks after she was born, named for her grandmother entire, and dead at fourteen months in Wodehouse.
Carolina Isabella Margaretha Aletta Mountjoy	b. 8 Nov 1901	Baptised at Aberdeen, and given the whole name again. She married Hendrik Stefanus Palm.
Carolina Isabella Margaretha Aletta	b. 1920	And a granddaughter, twenty-four years after the first of the name was buried.

Replacement naming — a child who dies young and a later child given the same name — is well attested in these congregations and is exactly how a records-matcher invents one person out of two. Here the dates make it unmistakable: a death in October 1897 and a birth in November 1901. This archive keeps the two apart, and says which is which.

One name, three surnames, no blood tie proved between two of them

Fortunatus

It comes out of the London Kolbes and ends up on a Booÿsen born in the year the war began.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe	of the London Kolbes	The source of the name.
Frederick Fortunatus Barry	—	Carried into the Barrys by the Kolbe marriage of 1850.
Frederik Fortsenatus Booÿsen	b. 1899	And into the Booysens, spelled with a diaeresis, in 1899.

Ruben, a Schoeman name, travels the same way into the Barrys — Ruben Jacobus Josuah Barry.

Two daughters, one name, eleven months apart

The two Gertrudes

Not a duplicated record. Two children, two death certificates, two cemeteries.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Gertrude Elizabeth Booyzen	11–15 May 1946	Four days old. Queen Victoria Hospital.
Gertrude Booyzen	11 May 1947	Six hours old, entry 3920, Turf Club Nursing Home. A different hospital and a different cemetery.

Born on the same date a year apart, and both named for the same person. This archive checked it precisely because it looked like an indexing error, and it is not one.

The van Niekerk names crossing into the Mountjoys

And it runs the other way too

The same habit, observed from a second direction and in a second family — which is what makes it a habit rather than a coincidence.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Jan Dirk Abraham Francois Mountjoy	b. 3 Sep 1891	For his mother's father, Jan Dirk Abram Frans van Niekerk of Dordrecht.
Carolina Isabella Margaretha Aletta Mountjoy	b. 15 Aug 1896	For his mother's mother.
Maria Sophia Mountjoy	b. 23 Oct 1898	For his mother.
Herklaus Johannes Mountjoy	b. 16 Feb 1904	For his father.
Willem Hermanus Mountjoy	b. 10 Apr 1915	And the Booyzen name, into the Mountjoys, twenty-six years after the two families stood at the same font at Barkly Oost.

Five of the eight children of Hercules Johannes Mountjoy and Maria Sophia van Niekerk are named for a grandparent or a parent. These come from the Dutch Reformed INDEX and not from the register images, and the person pages say so.

The Mountjoy names, crossing a third surname at Dordrecht

And into a family called Keys

The habit again, in a family this archive did not know existed until this afternoon.

Who	When	What they are to the name
William Henry Keys	b. 1854	Married a Johanna Catharina Mountjoy. Their children were baptised at Dordrecht, Burgersdorp and Barkly East between 1878 and 1897.
James Jonathan Keys	b. 18 Nov 1883	Baptised at Dordrecht — and named for James Jonathan Mountjoy, the retired builder of Barkly East.
Herklaas Edward Johannes Keys	b. 9 Feb 1897	Named for Herklaas — Hercules Johannes Mountjoy.
Maria Annie Sophia Keys	b. 21 Nov 1889	Maria Sophia, which is both a Mountjoy and a van Niekerk name.
Richard Pieter Kolbe Barry	b. 1899	And on the other side of the family, a Barry carrying the rebel's forename and the Settler's surname in one.

All from the index rather than from register images, and the person pages say so. Three surnames now carry these forenames out of the family that coined them: Daschner, Keys, and van Jaarsveld.

Four generations, out of one marriage, and it is not a Booysen name at all

Ockert Johannes Stephanus

Yesterday this archive could not account for the forename anywhere in six generations of Booysens. It comes in with one wife, from the district of Cradock, and then will not leave.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Ockert Johannes Stephanus Olivier	m. 1816	HER FATHER. Married Anna Catharina Botha at Graaff-Reinet on 8 December 1816 and baptised four children at Cradock. Not a Booysen.
Ockert Johannes Stephanus Olivier the younger	b. Feb 1826	His son, named for him entire.
Ockert Johannes Stephanus Booysen	15 Sep 1852 – 16 Jan 1921	HIS GRANDSON, by Anna Catharina Johanna Olivier — and the man who signed his own father's death notice in 1908. Confirmed at Rustenburg in 1869 on the same Sunday as his brother.
Ockert Johannes Stefanus Booysen of 1894	b. 16 May 1894	Baptised at Rustenburg, a great-nephew.
Ockert Johannes Stephanus Booysen of 1927	b. 23 Oct 1927	Named on his father's 1935 Sterfkennis as a minor of seven. FOUR generations on from Cradock.

Three women, three generations, the same two names

Elizabetha Margaretha

The 1900 death notice of one of them names the other two — a grandmother, a mother and a daughter who died a minor, all carrying it.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Elizabetha Margaretha Marais the elder	—	The grandmother, named on the 1900 notice as the deceased's own mother.
Elizabetha Margaretha Marais	c. Apr 1850 – 1 Jun 1900	Her daughter. Died in a zinc building in Market Street, Pretoria, four days before Lord Roberts entered the town.
Elizabeth Margarietha Booijzen	d. a minor	Her daughter, squeezed in between the lines of that notice after it had been written, with DIED MINOR against her.

An aunt in 1823, a niece two generations later

Aletta Catharina

The names in the Olivier household run back up the female line, and this archive could not see it until both baptisms were read on the same afternoon.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Aletta Catharina Olivier	b. 15 May 1823	Baptised at Cradock eleven months before her sister Anna Johanna.
Aletta Catharina Johanna Venter	—	Anna Johanna's own daughter, named on her mother's 1891 Sterfkennis and again on her father's 1908 notice, married in community of property to Stephanus Andries Venter.

Two children out of eleven, called straight after their mother's parents

The Boshoff grandparents, and what they prove

Worth noticing not for itself but for what it settles: this couple DID name children after grandparents, deliberately — which is why the eldest son's name is evidence in a disputed parentage.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Evert Philip Boshoff	—	Her father, named on her 1890 baptism at Mossel Bay.
Ewert Philippus Booyzen	—	Their grandson, named on the 1940 estate.
Susanna Frederika Aletta Meyer	—	Her mother, named on the same baptism.
Susanna Fredrika Aletta Booyzen	—	Their granddaughter, who married a Luus. All three of her grandmother's names.
David Schalk Booyzen of 1940	—	And the ELDEST son is called David Schalk — which is a point in the argument about whose son his father was. See /disputed/.

Two names that come from outside and appear nowhere else here

Byron, and Sybert

Most of this archive's names repeat until they are meaningless. These two arrive with an in-law and stop.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Robert Byron Keys	b. 3 Jan 1878	Eldest of the eight Keys children by Johanna Catharina Mountjoy.
Lancelott Byron Keys	b. 29 Jan 1888	The second Byron. The name comes from the Keys side, not the Mountjoy.
Coenrad Sybert van Staden	—	A son of Charlotta Dormehl by her FIRST husband.
Johannes Sybert Roos	—	A son of the same woman by her SECOND husband. SYBERT crossing between two marriages of one woman.

A surname that became a forename, and outlived everyone who knew her

Downing

Margaret Downing signed her marriage allegation with a mark in 1819, aged fifteen, swearing she was twenty-one. A hundred and thirty years later women in three provinces were being christened with the whole of her name.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Margaret Downing	b. London 23 Feb 1803, d. Burghersdorp Nov 1867	The 1820 Settler's wife, and the source. English, and the only person in this set who was born with the name.
Frederick Fortunatus Downing Kolbe	d. 1918	TAB MHG 40293. Her son's forenames and her own surname in one man, two generations on. His widow Hester Gertina Susanna, born Joubert, was born at VOLKSRUST and died in Natal in 1960 — which ties this name to the Wakkerstroom Kolbes.
Margaret Downing Fick, born Kolbe	d. 1949	VAB MHG 23877 and 801/49. Twice widowed — Fick, then Kruger — and in 1931 one of six Kolbe siblings applying to a court together.
Margaret Downing du Plessis, born Kolbe	d. 1941	VAB MHG 33459. A SECOND woman of the same three names, in the same province, within eight years.
Maria Margaretha Downing Rousseau	1968	TAB MHG 5450/68. Still being given in the Transvaal a century and a quarter after the Settler died.
Pieter Dowing Kolbe Lubbe	1959	Twice in the Free State civil records. By now the surname is LUBBE, and both KOLBE and DOWING have become forenames — the spelling worn down by one letter on the way.

THIS IS THE CLEANEST CASE ON THE PAGE OF A NAME OUTLIVING ITS OWNER'S OWN RECORD. Margaret Downing could not write her name in 1819 — she made a mark — and this archive did not have her birth date until a gravestone caption was read one line further on 15 September. HER NAME IS BETTER RECORDED THAN SHE IS: it appears in four estate files and two court records across three provinces, and it is still being given fifty years after the last person who could have met her was dead.

A forename this archive carried for a fortnight without noticing, under a spelling that is not a word

Rector

ANTON RECTOR KOLBE BARRY was baptised at Burgersdorp in 1883 and this archive could never say where his Rector came from. On 21 September a compiled register report supplied the answer by spelling correctly a name the family list had been spelling wrongly.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Keetor — read Rector — Peter Benjamin Kolbe	b. 1840, Colesberg	THE PROBABLE SOURCE, AND HE IS IN NO DOCUMENT. The family list has carried him as KEETOR, which is not a name; a 2012 compiled report gives the same man as PETER RECTOR KOLBE, which is. On the ordinary reading the tree has been carrying a misreading of a hand. But he is absent from BOTH his supposed parents' death notices, and a boy born in 1840 would have been four when his father died — so he died before 1845 or he does not belong to this family.
Anton Rector Kolbe Barry	b. 3 Nov 1882, bapt. Burgersdorp 1883	THE GREAT-NEPHEW, and the reason any of this matters. The Kolbe name in a fourth generation and the furthest down this archive has traced it. A great-uncle called Rector would explain him — which is the same namesake reasoning that traced Fortunatus across three families — but two compiled sources agreeing about a forename are still two compiled sources.

Named in two death notices, missing from this archive's own people list, and still in use ninety years later

Casimir

A compiled report listed a JOHAN CASMIER KOLBE and this archive recorded that no such name had ever been held here. It was wrong: he is in both his parents' death notices, and the family list already carried the variant Casiner.

Who	When	What they are to the name
Johan Casimir Kolbe	b. 1844, Bethulie	THE SETTLER'S CHILD, named in his father's death notice signed at Colesberg in January 1845 and again in his mother's of 25 November 1867 — where the document marks Mary Elizabeth dead and does not mark him, so he was alive at about twenty-three. Nothing is known of his own life: no baptism, no marriage, no death.
Johan Hendrik Casimir Kolbe	b. 1863, m. Gertruida Jacomina Louw	SOUTH AFRICA, CIVIL MARRIAGE RECORDS, 1801–1974, and one of three men of the name in that register. A SHARED SURNAME IS NOT A RELATIONSHIP and he is not joined to this house — he is here because a rare forename recurring in the same country for ninety years is a thing to follow, not a thing to assume.
Johan Casimir Kolbe	b. 1934, m. Maria Monica Van Der Walt	THE THIRD, and the latest. Ninety years after the Settler's child, the same two forenames in the same country's marriage register.

What it costs

The same habit that makes this family legible makes it dangerous to index. Three of this archive's corrections are name collisions, and one of them stood for weeks: an estate filed in 1885 was given to the wrong Jan Gerhardus Lodewicus, and a death date was invented to fit.

So this site does not merge people on a name. Where two people share one, they share a page and the page says so out loud; where a name is carried by more than one person, every chart and every register row keeps them apart. What was taken back → · Everyone → · The surname →

What this page rests on

Death notice, George Augustus Kolbe, 1845document read hereWestern Cape Archives — KAB MOOC 6/9/35 no. 7698; the image is published on this site

Death notice, Margaret Downing, 1868document read hereWestern Cape Archives — Master of the Supreme Court, estate 4094; the image is published on this site

Marriage register, Booysen–Barry, 1879document read hereWestern Cape Archives — Nederduits Gereformeerde duplicate registers, Barkly East; the image is published on this site

Namesake reasoning needs documents that NAME a household's children, and in this archive that is two death notices and a marriage register.

The full bibliography, with what each source gave and where it is weak →