This is an exploratory paper using unobtrusive measures to study regularities in the American practice of using Jr. and numerical suffixes to indicate patrilateral name inheritance. The practice is shown to be more common on the eastern seaboard than elsewhere in the country. Over the present century it is shown to have increased rapidly and then to have declined. This changing incidence over time is paralleled by a changing distribution in the social structure: originally practiced by the white property-owning and professional class, it has spread to the white working class and to the black population. This practice is usefully considered as a property of the status system and its changing distribution can be understood as status usurpation through the operation of the “trickle effect.”