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ArchivesRe: Whither middle names?
in reply to a message by Tue
What a lovely can of worms this morning!
My husband was named Ernest after his father and Hilton because they liked it. He has never been called Ernest, and finds that a relief, but it is rather a pain when people make the wrong assumption. His initials are EHH, which is better than HEH I suppose. Similarly, my cousin Robin Thompson has Arthur as his first name instead of his middle name because then his initials spell ART instead of RAT which has got to be preferable!
When I was expecting my first child, a woman who had worked in (British) Naval Intelligence during the Second World War said that her job was mainly contacting the surviving relatives of people who had gone down with their ships. She advised me strongly to give my children at least two names and preferably three - said that she used to find eleven pages of John Smith, from which she had to identify the right one, seven pages of John William Smith, and one single entry for John William George Smith. This made sense to me, and Peter David Alastair, Caroline Beatrice Mary and Beatrice Elizabeth Anne are the proof!
I suspect that the practice may have arisen partly from the Roman Catholic habit of taking a saint's or godparent's name in addition to one's own at confirmation; also if one converts to Catholicism one chooses a suitable Catholic name - not for use, just as something nice to have. What does the Danish royal family do? The British royals have three or four given names each, but I suppose they don't really have surnames! I think this might have been a German habit originally - German royalty anyway, while there was any.
Do people use double first names in Denmark? Like Anne-Marie or Hans-Dietrich? That might be a half-way stage.
As for Luke Skywalker, who says that his middle name would look like a name in our galaxy? Or even be possible to pronounce? And there's an entire Thomas Hardy novel (Mayor of Casterbridge as far as I recall) in which the heroine is always and only referred to as Elizabeth-Jane.
Afrikaans-speaking South Africans have a strong tradition, now crumbling, that you name the first son after the paternal grandfather, the first daughter after the paternal grandmother, and so on down the generations until you have a vast clan of cousins all with identical names. Nicknames are frequent! But this sometimes means that one child in the family might have just one given name and the next one might have four! This has always seemed odd to me, but they seem to cope.
My husband was named Ernest after his father and Hilton because they liked it. He has never been called Ernest, and finds that a relief, but it is rather a pain when people make the wrong assumption. His initials are EHH, which is better than HEH I suppose. Similarly, my cousin Robin Thompson has Arthur as his first name instead of his middle name because then his initials spell ART instead of RAT which has got to be preferable!
When I was expecting my first child, a woman who had worked in (British) Naval Intelligence during the Second World War said that her job was mainly contacting the surviving relatives of people who had gone down with their ships. She advised me strongly to give my children at least two names and preferably three - said that she used to find eleven pages of John Smith, from which she had to identify the right one, seven pages of John William Smith, and one single entry for John William George Smith. This made sense to me, and Peter David Alastair, Caroline Beatrice Mary and Beatrice Elizabeth Anne are the proof!
I suspect that the practice may have arisen partly from the Roman Catholic habit of taking a saint's or godparent's name in addition to one's own at confirmation; also if one converts to Catholicism one chooses a suitable Catholic name - not for use, just as something nice to have. What does the Danish royal family do? The British royals have three or four given names each, but I suppose they don't really have surnames! I think this might have been a German habit originally - German royalty anyway, while there was any.
Do people use double first names in Denmark? Like Anne-Marie or Hans-Dietrich? That might be a half-way stage.
As for Luke Skywalker, who says that his middle name would look like a name in our galaxy? Or even be possible to pronounce? And there's an entire Thomas Hardy novel (Mayor of Casterbridge as far as I recall) in which the heroine is always and only referred to as Elizabeth-Jane.
Afrikaans-speaking South Africans have a strong tradition, now crumbling, that you name the first son after the paternal grandfather, the first daughter after the paternal grandmother, and so on down the generations until you have a vast clan of cousins all with identical names. Nicknames are frequent! But this sometimes means that one child in the family might have just one given name and the next one might have four! This has always seemed odd to me, but they seem to cope.
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