lane@8565.DEC (Mickey Lane x3067) (12/31/85)
Does anyone know when the practice of giving people middle names
started? Old records (1700s) rarely show them. Is it that people did
not record middle names or is it that they did not have them?
Mickey Lanebennison@clt.DEC (Victor Bennison - DTN 381-2156) (01/03/86)
--- > Does anyone know when the practice of giving people middle names >started? Old records (1700s) rarely show them. Is it that people did >not record middle names or is it that they did not have them? > > Mickey Lane I'm not an expert on the subject, but you all know that that has never stopped me before. In the U.S. the year 1800 is a pretty accurate date to place the start of the use of middle names. In the families I've worked on, the earliest date for a middle name I've seen is about 1786. By the year 1810 the use is very widespread. The names of children didn't appear in the census records until 1850, but in that census you will find most people over 50 don't have middle names, but many of their children will be listed with middle names. So it isn't just a matter of not using them, the old folk didn't have them. There is a difference, by the way, between multiple christening names and middle names. Many old German baptismal records for example show children with multiple names. A common example might be: Johan Christian Lupp Johan Martin Lupp Anna Catherina Lupp Anna Maria Lupp Where these are all children born in the same family. Generally these people would never again use the "first" name, but would go by Christian, Martin, Catherine and Maria. By "using middle names" I mean the practice of giving a person a secondary given name which would often be used at least for formal records such as census records, wills, etc., i.e., the practice that we have today in the U.S. There are some notable exceptions to the rule: Martha Dandridge Custis, born 1731 (Mrs. Washington) John Singleton Copley, born 1738 Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, born 1746 John Paul Jones, born 1747 John Quincy Adams, born 1767 William Henry Harrison, born 1773 But 1800 seems to mark the time when the practice became widespread in the U.S. Perhaps it was a custom of the upper crust, that became popular with the hoi polloi about that time. I haven't looked at the English records enough to venture an opinion on the use of middle names there. Vick Bennison ...decvax!decwrl!rhea!tools!bennison (603) 881-2156
andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews) (01/03/86)
In article <236@decwrl.DEC.COM> bennison@clt.DEC (Victor Bennison...) writes: >But 1800 seems to mark the time when the practice became widespread in the >U.S. Perhaps it was a custom of the upper crust, that became popular with >the hoi polloi about that time.... This is my belief too. One source of impetus for this may have been the desire to incorporate the wife's family name into the children's name. This would have been done if that name carried some prestige. Some ways of doing it are: (a) changing both parents' names to a hyphenated name (e.g. Newton-John), (b) making one child's first name the wife's last name (the Canadian author Robertson Davies believes this practice is more common in Canada), or (c) giving the children the wife's last name as a middle name. This last practice seems to be the most convenient, and may turn into almost a traditional secondary last name, if it's carried through several generations. For example, the "Reuel" in John Ronald Reuel (J.R.R.) Tolkien's name was a traditional middle name, presumably derived from some female ancestor whose name would not otherwise be remembered in the family. He gave the same middle name to his son, C.J.R. The concept of using two names as links to both the wife's and the husband's families can be thus extended from family names to personal names; for instance, I am named after my maternal and paternal grandfathers (James and Harold), and my niece is named after her maternal and paternal grandmothers (Isobel and Christianne). As I say, I presume this would have been done originally in the "upper crust" as a way of importing prestige, and then filtered down to the "hoi polloi" as a way of importing upper-crustiness, and then just became common enough for people to do it with no class connotations. --Jamie. ...!ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews "She was Dolores on the dotted line"
faunt@hplabs.UUCP (Doug Faunt) (01/04/86)
> > Does anyone know when the practice of giving people middle names > started? Old records (1700s) rarely show them. Is it that people did > not record middle names or is it that they did not have them? > > Mickey Lane I just looked at the DAR applications for my mother and grandmother, which were sitting on top of the terminal here, and notice that one ancestor, John Skottowe Bellinger, was born in 1777, another, James Fisher Edwards, was born in 1787, and his wife, Mary Edwards Gadsden (yes, her middle name and married last name were both Edwards) was born in 1791. This was all in South Carolina, in and around Charleston. None of the earlier people had them. -- ....!hplabs!faunt faunt@hplabs.ARPA HP is not responsible for anything I say here. In fact, what I say here may have been generated by a noisy telephone line.
rlm@drutx.UUCP (MesenbrinkRL) (01/08/86)
Vick Bennison brought up a German research point that interested me. >Many old German >baptismal records for example show children with multiple names. A common >example might be: > > Johan Christian Lupp > Johan Martin Lupp > Anna Catherina Lupp > Anna Maria Lupp > >Where these are all children born in the same family. Generally these people >would never again use the "first" name, but would go by Christian, Martin, >Catherine and Maria. A German immigrant ancestor of mine went by Heinrich Johan Mesenbrink, but I was very surprised to find a German baptismal certificate (Luth.) in his Civil War Pension file stating his name as Diedrich Konrad Heinrich Mesenbrink. From what Vick said, I understand now why "Heinrich" was used, but I don't know why he didn't ever use either of the first two names. And where did he get "Johan"? If I hadn't found this in his pension file, I would not have recognized these people as the same person. (And I'm still not sure they are.) Bob Mesenbrink Denver, CO