My First SGT in Basic was 1st SGT Burgess. There was also a Private Burgess in my platoon. Once when she identified herself during one of the 1st SGT’s lectures, all the DSs got on her for calling the 1st SGT “Private.”
I knew a guy named Nels when I was in high school, and my maiden name was Goldhammer. We both juggled. Someone said we should have an act called “Hammer and Nels.” [/hijack]
Which is the explanation for:
Marvel Comics really likes to use simple names for their characters. Many examples are first names used for last names as noted above.
As a separate matter, they and other comic & animated cartoon producers also like first and last names to start with the same letter. Adam Ant. Lois Lane. Lex Luthor. Peter Parker. Mighty Mouse. et al.
Clark Kent is spelled with different first letters but has the same first sound.
I had a relative whose last name was Major. During WWII, he occasionally would receive mail addressed to Major Clarence, instead of
Clarence Major.
(His first name wasn’t actually “Clarence” but it will do for purposes of this post.)
Well, for what it’s worth: Firsty-Firsty.
http://www.gq.com/story/paul-ryans-secret-advantage-being-a-firsty-firsty
Good find. It sounds as though the thread is also discussing the parallel phenomena of the “Lasty-Lasty” and the “Lasty-Firsty”.
It might be stressed that we are talking only about names of British origin. Spanish last names, for example, are distinct and virtually never used as first names; nor do typical first names appear as last names. There are separate ways of forming a last name from a first name, for example:
Gonzalo Gonzalez
Fernando Fernandez
Martin Martinez
Rodrigo Rodriguez
Gomez Addams was exceptional since Gomez would not normally be used as a first name.
No, we’re not just talking about surnames of British origin. Surnames of Irish origin, for example, are regularly repurposed as forenames in the US - Ryan, Murphy, Kelly, Cassidy - even though this doesn’t happen in Ireland, or happens only on a small scale and mostly in imitation of the US practice…
I think what’s going on here is that the US applies an originally British custom of “firsting” surnames to names from other ethnic traditions. They don’t do that for Spanish names because Hispanic culture is sufficiently enduring in the US to establish and maintain its own practices in this regard. But my suspicion is that it’s Spanish and possibly one or two other nomenclatures that are the exception here; the norm in the US is that surnames are repurposed relatively freely, and this isn’t confined to surnames from Britain.
Interestingly enough, in Ireland Anglo-Saxon surnames are “firsted” fairly readily, but Gaelic surnames very rarely.
Gomez Addams was Anglo, really, even if the actor wasn’t.
All those lastnames listed are the patronimics of the given firstname and as you say, they’re all distinct from it. But there’s the exception: the firstname García produces two patronimics (García and Garcés), of which one happens to be both identical to the firstname itself and more common in Spain than any of the others.
PRIMER APELLIDO FRECUENCIA Por 1.000
1 GARCIA -------------- 1.476.378 31,6
2 GONZALEZ ------------ 929.938 19,9
3 RODRIGUEZ ----------- 928.305 19,8
4 FERNANDEZ ---------- 922.007 19,7
Taken from the link “Primer apellido por provincia de residencia y de nacimiento” (First lastname, separated by province of residence and of birth), here.
UDS, how often is that done with Italian, German, Swedish, Polish lastnames?
EDIT: nm
I thought you were going to be going the other way–both names sound like a last name.
I have a common last name as a first name, and a common first name as a last name. I’ve actually wound up confused when someone who was actually named TBig was called. I just assumed they’d made a mistake.
Oh, and my last name is often a girl’s first name. So I’ve also wound up being mistaken for a girl when filling things out. I almost wound up in a girl’s dorm in college. To correct the mistake, they had to move me into a nearby hotel until space cleared up.
Good question, and I realise that I don’t know the answer. All of the common examples that I can think of are either Anglo-Saxon or Gaelic surnames.
So maybe, in fact, the exceptional case here is the Gaelic surnames. Maybe that’s the only class of surnames routinely used as given names in the US even though this is not the practice in the country of origin?
This is in part stuff that I’ve gathered on the issue from the Dope and other sources, in part taken from my left elbow.
Piece of data: in the US, that custom is almost if not completely restricted to Anglo names, where Anglo is in the meaning of “from places where the main language is English”, not in that of “of English origin”. That includes all of the British Isles, not just GB or England.
Piece of data whose source I don’t recall: the origin of the custom seems to be that Scottish soldiers picked it up from the Portuguese own naming custom of using both a maternal and paternal lastname, in that order. Since Scottish name structures already included multiple personal names but did not include multiple family names, they used the maternal lastname as one of the personal names (i.e., as a middle name). According to the same source this happened at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, so c. 1810.
Piece of data: there was a lot of migration out and through Scotland in the 19th century, the “through” including many Irish.
So from Portugal to Scotland, from Scotland to all those places where Scots and people traveling through Scotland went in the 19th century, including the US. Other groups and other countries haven’t picked up the custom. They may do it at some point, but as of this point in time have not.
The only data I have to add to that is that the practice is certainly present in Ireland (and I’m pretty sure Scotland) well before 1810. Henry Joy McCracken was born in 1767; his middle name is his mother’s maiden name. I don’t know when Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey was born, but he died in 1798; both of his given names are surnames. James Napper Tandy was born in 1739. Theobald Wolfe Tone was born in 1763; his second forename was the surname of his godfather.
These are all Protestants, and there is a strong Scottish influence, especially in Ulster, so the custom could well have come from Scotland. But it certainly predates the Napoleonic era.
Bearing in mind that quite a lot of surnames in both Scottish and Irish Gaelic would originally have been patronymics (i.e., at some point a father’s given name got fixed as a family surname)…
(My understanding is that in Hispanic practice, you adopt both parents’ surnames, so you wouldn’t want another as a given name; but people from cultures who don’t might well imagine one or other surname is in fact the person’s given name )
I’m thinking that there may have been a distinction here, both in Scotland and in Ireland, between the Anglophone and Gaelic-speaking cultures.
It seems to me that it’s mostly Anglophone, lowland Scots who turn surnames into forenames, and simiilarly in Ireland it’s Anglophone settlers (many of whom are from Scotland) and their descendants who do so. And it’s the names associated with those cultures which get treated in this way.
Gaelic-speakers don’t do this, either in Scotland or in Ireland. And even their descendants who adopt English don’t do it, at least with Gaelic names.
You’re right to say that most Gaelic surnames are in fact patronymics; this probably militates against their being adopted as forenames. Why call your son McMurrough when you can simply call him Murrough? But I notice that this hasn’t prevented Anglo names like Jackson from becoming forenames.
Kennedy is not a first name I’ve never seen in the wild. Now, granted I’m just one person and the stats do bear out that it was in the top 1000 names for a long while, I never saw it and I was born around that time. Since it says “Highest Percentage: 0.012% in 1964” those would be my peers and again, nothing.
It reminds me of Kunta Kinte from roots fame. Kunta was popular for a bit but I’ve never met anyone who was named it. Heck, it was a one hit wonder but “Highest Percentage: 0.014% in 1977” you’d think I’d have run across it at some point.
None of these lists breaks down regionally and I’d suspect that there is a bit of this going on here. Popular doesn’t mean popular everywhere after all.
All that sounds sensible and yes, I was thinking only of mainstream white US names at the time.
An interesting question is how much over the next, say, 50 years, Hispanic culture in the US becomes less insular and more integrated. Certainly there’s lots of intermarrying going on now, and more all the time. Plus plain old cultural assimilation. Immigration will probably continue at a good clip, but the native born 1st, 2nd, and soon 3rd generation Hispanic USAians are only getting to be larger groups over time.
Given that, how much, if at all, will Hispanic heritage folks begin adopting more Anglo-style naming conventions?
To be sure, I’m just speculating here but experts may already be seeing some early signs. Or not. Or maybe, like the slow spread of Spanglish, we’ll see some Anglos adopting patronymics & matronymics.
Names like Wilson, Nelson and so on are not uncommon as given names in Brazil, of course.
And Cameron Díaz’s name always cracks me up; apparently she does have a middle name of Michelle. In Spanish-speaking countries, Yésicas are perfectly common for certain ages and socioeconomic strata (in Spain “la Yesi” has become shorthand for women of that specific group), although those living in the US normally spell it Jessica. I’ve had Latin American coworkers with names such as Nelson or Franklin. I’ve also known a Rommel, from the Philippines. But except for Ms Diaz, whose name does follow general US conventions, all those fall under the same heading as Anglos using Delores, Chelo or Joya (pronounced Yoya): it’s just picking a firstname from another culture, something that’s been going on for thousands of years.