Dorothea Regina Coetzee, b10c2d4e3f11

• Death Notice, showing a different second name (see the note below).
• Baptism, but see the note below about her second name.
• Marriage register entry, but see note below on second name.

Note on names

The baptism shows her as Dorothea REGINA, named after one of the witnesses. In her Death Notice and will she is recorded as Dorothea CHRISTINA. The Death Notice is for the correct person, as it gives the names of her parents and her age as 34 years, 1 month, 22 days. Subtracting that from the date of death gives 24 Dec 1847 which matches the baptism and SAG. The sourced baptism shows the same birth date and parents, but the name is Dorothea REGINA. When she got married in 1864 in Potchefstroom, her name was recorded as Dorothea CATHARINA. Then, between 1865 and 1880, 10 children were baptised in Potchefstroom with father Stephanus Hermanus COETZEE and mother Dorothea [Catharina (6 times) / Christina (3 times) / Margaretha (1 time)] NEL. The names and order of these children follow exactly the list in Dorothea CHRISTINA's Death Notice as well as in Stephanus Hermanus', except two who probably died young, so this was the same family unit and rules out the possibility of there being another couple in the same parish having the same number of children and naming them in the same order, with the only difference being the wife's second name. The names also match the Dutch naming pattern for grandparents. The children were born with plausible gaps between them for one mother, and given that the children later baptised their own daughters in the Dutch naming pattern as Dorothea CATHARINA, that was most likely her accepted name. It is possible that the will was either incorrectly written in 1873 as CHRISTINA, because we only have a copy where she did not sign herself. From then onward the name CHRISTINA appears more often. On her (and her husband's) DN it is used and even the daughter that was named after her (Dorothea CATHARINA) is named as Dorothea CHRISTINA.

SAG Vol 6, CD Version:

b10c2d4 Jan NEL ≈ 10.2.1765 x Maria Francina VAN DER VYWER xx Carolina BECK

e3 Willem Adriaan ≈ 21.5.1797 † 26.1.1854 x Johanna Jacoba Catharina HOFFMAN xx Adriana Susanna BREDENHAHN

f11 Dorothea Regina NEL * 24.12.1847