At what age does a Sr. become a Sr? Is it when you name the Jr.?

Yes, a Sr becomes a Sr only after a Jr is born.

I would say that it is just an ego boost, but people can name their kids whatever they want. I think it’s important to let your kid have his own identity – he’s not solely an extension of the father.

As for women, the idea of “carrying on the family name” doesn’t apply because women usually take their husband’s last name. If a female gives her married name to her daughter, that name will probably change when that girl is married, meaning she would no longer be a Jr. Men pass on the family name; women do not.

@livelaughlove21 Does a Jr. become a Sr. when his father dies? Only if he has a son of the same name “III” (the third)?

I knew someone who went by the “Bubba Joe Bob Jones III” (not his real name, duh) in HS about 45 years ago and I noticed in a recent FB post about an upcoming reunion that he still uses this moniker. Surely his grandfather is dead by now and very possibly his father also. So I assume that moving up the ranks is optional.

@rojo – No, you don’t move up. Joe Smith, Jr. stays junior, etc. down the line.

Being a junior, or a senior, or the third, or the fourth indicates that you are not the first person in your family to have borne a particular name. A child isn’t named Thomas Jefferson Windham, Junior. He is named Thomas Jefferson Windham and becomes Thomas Jefferson Windham, Junior in virtue of there having already been a Thomas Jefferson Windham in the family after whom the younger one is named. And if a third one is born, Thomas Jefferson Windham, Senior becomes Thomas Jefferson Windham I. By the same token, Thomas Jefferson Windham, Junior becomes Thomas Jefferson Windham II, and the youngest is born—and will stay—Thomas Jefferson Windham III. In short, it’s just a way of distinguishing people with the same name.

People do not “move up the ranks,” then, because death does not eliminate the need to refer to previous bearers of the name. Moreover, the point of giving someone the same name as one of their ancestors is typically to start or participate in a family tradition. If Thomas Jefferson Windham III eventually became a junior and then a senior (or perhaps dropped the suffix altogether upon becoming the only one living), both of these uses would be lost. That said, one may refrain from using the suffix in everyday life and leave it to historians (should any be interested). It all depends on one’s interest in the family tradition.

This is just the standard way things go, however. There are many anomalies. A junior might be treated as the senior by his ancestors if he is of some particular importance. Or a family might employ generational suffixes even when names aren’t exactly the same. Wikipedia has some examples here.

@rojo Once a Jr, always a Jr.

I had an “Uncle Gus” (not his real name) who named his son (a few years older than me), for himself. Although “Cousin Gus” was technically a junior (on all his official paper), we all referred to him as “Little Gus”, or when he grew up, “Young Gus”. When Young Gus had a son, he carried on the family tradition by naming his own son Gus. We referred to him as “Gus III” or Gus the Third (the cousins around Gus III’s age sometimes deliberately mispronounced it as “Gus the Turd”).

Now that Uncle Gus and Cousin Gus are no longer with us, we refer to Gus III merely as Gus, unless we are telling family stories.

I also had a high school friend who was named for his uncle. Instead of “Junior” and “Senior” they were differentiated as “Robert P. Jones I” (uncle) and “Robert P. Jones II”.

@Yetanotheruser and that brings up another point, since the second Rob Jones was not named after his father but another family member, would he have ever been “officially” a junior?

No, he would not have been a Junior. I had this exact conversation with him when I once saw him sign his name as “II”.

> Why, in our enlightened and egalitarian society, do women not have “Junior” or “III” as name pieces?

I did know a woman who styled herself as “Mary Jones, Jr.” I thought that was a peculiar affectation. I’m afraid it influenced my opinion of her.

I assume that the “Jr.” practice is what it is because in the cultural tradition to which it belongs, (a) men were heads of households, (b) it was important to know which household and head of household you were talking about, especially once people without titles began to amass wealth (I doubt that serfs and servants bothered with “junior” designations), and (c) most people have no hereditary titles to distinguish generations of the same family.

This is speculative, though, and not the result of any research.

I have known several guys who went by the nickname “Tripp”, which was because they were the third – as in the late Thurston B Howell III.

None of them really liked the nickname Tripp – one of them told me “call me David”, which was his real name. But he had been ‘assigned’ that nickname 30 years earlier, at birth, and he wasn’t ever going to change everyone’s behavior.

Yes, when a child is born and given the same name as the father, it’s customary for the dad to take on the Sr. and give the child the title, Jr. One may drop the Jr. after their father is deceased. I’m a Jr., and did not choose to inflict a III on my offspring, but my elder son named one of his after me, so now there is a III. We’re all Jameses so we’re beginning to sound like kings.