From the Database of Keith L. Smith:
When I first started researching the Kißling ancestors in the church records in Winterlingen, I was really puzzled and then I figured it out. "Young Hans" became "old Hans" after he had a son also named Johannes and who was also called Hans. This then was the norm -- generation after generation. Once this was clear, it became possible to follow the events for the family in the church records. Several years later in the Württemberg newsgroup, one of the German participants explained this as a naming tradition throughout what is now Baden Württemberg and was not just peculiar to the Kißling family. Since a limited number of names were used in each area and the same names were used generation after generation, the use of adjectives like young, old, etc. before the "name that the person was called" became the norm and was the only way that the pastor and other villages keep people straight.
