Running out of first names?

The chaos caused by my own family and their habit of reusing first names has caused many a headache for me when tracing my family tree. My 4XGreat Grandparents had thirteen children and all bar one married and had children of their own resulting in the entire family being made up of children with only seven or eight first names. John, George, Thomas, Elijah and William being the most common.

My great aunt was one of fourteen children and was named Sheila. I asked her who she was named after and she said that by the time she was born they had run out of family names so they had to think of a new one. She mentioned her Dad seeing the name Sheila written on an advertisement on the back of a bus and it stuck.