July 28, 2008 at 12:00 am #20599
PaulaC
Participant
I think this relates back to the tradition of a family business or trade – where a father passes the business on to his son. Many businesses were named “Johnson and Sons,” etc. I’m presuming that the practice of naming the son the same as the father also came from this practice, and to to preserve special names in the family, and that “Senior” and “Junior” terms were used to denote which John Smith a person wished to speak with.