Elizabeth Petronella Wilhelmina Snyman (26 September 1878

Known as Bettie, Elizabeth is the eldest of no fewer than fifteen children of Gabriel Johannes Snyman and Wilhelmina Petronella Elizabeth Schaap of Rietvley. Wilhelmina, in turn, is the daughter of Elizabeth Petronella Wilhelmina Destro, whence Bettie's name as eldest daughter. Bettie is confirmed in the Dutch Reformed Parish of Oudtshoorn on 28 September 1894 and is introduced to the congregation the very next day as a 15 year old teen.

A mystery surrounds the naming of Bettie and Petrus Booyens' children. The convention is that the first daughter be named after the mother's mother. This means the first daughter should be named "Wilhelmina Petronella Elizabeth", but the first daughter is in fact named after Petrus' mother, Maria Susanna Jacoba Stander, who is present as witness at that baptism. Convention also calls for the first son to be named after the father's father, but this also is reversed, and the first son is named after Bettie's father, Gabriel Johannes Snyman. This may have something to do with the fact that Petrus' father, Pieter Johannes Ernst, dies in 1897, before any of the children are born. It may also be that Gabriel Snyman, whose four eldest children are all girls, is very eager to see his first grandson and insists on the naming. This may be precipitated by the realisation that his four eldest children are all girls, implying that it is only their second sons that will eventually, one day, be named for him. There are other such examples of grandfather warpage of the naming convention, somtimes assuming the extremely unfortunate dimension of giving men's names to daughters.

It certainly appears as though an active decision was made to precisely invert the convention. Once that assumption is made, the naming proceeds as per the inverted convention. However, the child to be named for Bettie herself is absent. The usual reason is that such a child has died in infancy. Whatever the reason, the third surviving daughter instead ends up named for Petrus' late eldest sister, Anna Sophia. This is exactly in line with the inverted convention if a daughter before her, named for the mother, has died. The only plausible explanation, consistent with the human reproductive cycle, is if first son Gabriel has a twin sister, named for Bettie, but who dies in infancy before being formally baptised. No baptism exists for such a child. Indeed, within this family, the members insist in the 21st century that Gabriel had a twin sister, but she is usually conflated with a much later daughter named Johanna, who also dies at a very young age.