Quote Originally Posted by rockzmom View Post
"Root" parent? Hmmm. Do you mean their father and mother or grandparents? I know that in some cultures you do NOT name the child after anyone who is currently living, so if you mean the child's mother and father... that would not be a tradition everywhere.
In Russian this works both ways for grandparents and for parents. If a family has a tradition to name a boy after a grandfather then taking into account Russians' using patronymic the boy's and his grandfather's names would coincide totally as well as the names of the father and the grand-grandfather. On the other hand if a family like it is possible to name a boy after his father and we can take for example our newly elected old president "Владимир Владимирович".

Quote Originally Posted by rockzmom View Post
But then you get some Catholic families who all name the girls in the family Mary [something], like Mary Ellen, Mary Elizabeth, Mary Margaret, Mary Catherine... they are "called" by their middle name though.

I'm trying to remember... I believe it is Koreans who name the generation all the same name. I worked with a guy years ago who told me this. He and all of his siblings and cousins (male and female) all had the same name.
According to what I read about Koreans these two cases are close to one another. A Korean name consist of three parts. First is the family name and the two other parts are the first name. The last part of the first name is shared among the siblings as a tradition.