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From: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Newsgroups: net.roots
Subject: Re: middle names
Message-ID: <131@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Jan-86 13:12:45 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.131
Posted: Fri Jan  3 13:12:45 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jan-86 00:29:11 EST
References: <236@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Reply-To: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 31
Summary: 

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"