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If you can find a copy of...

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either E.G. Withycombe 'Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names' or Ernest Weekley's article 'Jack and Jill', they give instances of the first recorded usage of middle names in the UK. I'd quote 'em myself for you, but I'm not at home.

I did a quick search on ancestry.com using Smith as a surname and 1500 as the birth date.

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http://awt.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?surname=Smith&byear=1500&start=1

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As you can see, none of the first 6 or so pages of matches have middle names. I would say it's very rare for someone in the 1500's or post 1500s to have a middle name.

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Hope that helped.

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Melina

um...no