Yes. It is pretentious unless you are royalty, as those sorts of long strings are awarded by historians to keep rulers straight in the history books. The hoi polloi just do what they have to to get the precedent right at dinner.
But you wouldn’t introduce yourself as “Firstname Firstmiddlename Secondmiddlename Lastname IV”, just like normal people don’t drop fun facts about their great grandparents to people they just met. You’d introduce yourself as “Firstly Lastname”.
I’ve never heard of someone changing their suffix when an ancestor died.
Here’s an example of 11 generations:
I’m a Jr, and my son a III. (Or some other numbers depending on how you count. My father, his uncle (my great uncle) that uncle’s grand father, that uncle’s son (my father’s cousin), and his son (my second cousin) all bear the same name as me. I don’t know if my son has a third cousin of the same name.
In any case my birth certificate says Jr. and I’ve kept that suffix even after all save my son (and his possible third cousin) are deceased. It is quite convenient that my drivers license, my birth certificate, my tax records, my passport, etc, all bear exactly the same name. Having just recently applied for Medicare, I’d hate to think of the administrative hassles if they did not.
Of course my son and I happen to work at the same place which has a policy: your email address is firstname.lastname@… no nicknames allowed. They had to break that mold for us.
I knew a guy who was Something III, and he went by the nickname “Trey”. I highly doubt he changed his nickname when his grandfather died.
Everyone focuses on father-son lines. What about mother-daughter lines? Mary daughter of Mary daughter of Mary must be quite common since Mary is such a common name, but here’s a chain of 9 consecutive Barbaras:
Barbara Wilberforce was the daughter of the famous abolitionist William Wilberforce and his wife Barbara Anne née Spooner.
Barbara Spooner was the daughter of Barbara née Gough.
Barbara Gough was the daughter of Barbara née Calthorpe.
Barbara Calthorpe was the daughter of Barbara née Yelverton.
Barbara Yelverton was the daughter of Barbara née Talbot.
Barbara Talbot was the daughter of Barbara née Slingsby.
Barbara Slingsby was the daughter of Barbara née Belasyse.
Barbara Belasyse was the daughter of Barbara née Cholmeley.
Barbara Cholmeley was the daughter of Margaret née Babthorpe.
Margaret Babthorpe was the daughter of Barbara née Constable.
Barbara Constable was the daughter of Katherine née Manners.
Katherine Manners was the daughter of Anne née St.Leger (who died giving birth to Katherine).
Anne St.Leger was the daughter of Anne, Princess of York.
Anne of York was the daughter of Cecily née Neville, mother of King Richard III.
Barbara Wilberforce died childless in her teens, so the line of Barbaras ended there.
The uterine line traces back to King Richard III’s mother. This is why the lineage attracted the attention of genealogists in the first place: it was a descendant of Barbara Wilberforce’s aunt whose mitochondrial DNA was compared with the hunchbacked skeleton recently found under a car park.
It is traditionally the standard custom, though. Here’s a LawProse article citing etiquette pronouncements on the subject from 1937 to 2003, and an update discussing reasons for the modern shift toward not changing/dropping the suffix.
Of course, there were exceptions to the older custom even way back when, for many of the same reasons used against it today, as in this 1891 description of an example from the 1860s:
But as the “special-announcement” status clearly shows, this was the exception to the conventional rule. There are lots of individuals who changed their suffix due to the death of an ancestor, including the writer Henry James and the 17th-century engraver William Faithorne. (A Google search on the phrase “III, now Jr” brings up lots of examples from newspaper references.)
Amusingly, the traditional custom has fallen out of favor nowadays to the extent that some people don’t even understand its use by their own close relatives, as in this 2014 obituary for playwright/screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr.:
There’s a difference between [how you might be designated from time to time] and [what your name actually is].
This fact confuses some people. Those confused people crib parts of [how someone might be designated from time to time] and add them onto their child’s name.
It’s like if someone asked them the make and model of their car and they say “Chevrolet Nova With Bucket Seats”. “Oh, OK, it’s a Chevrolet Nova.” “No, this one is Chevrolet Nova With Bucket Seats”.
In the case of “real authentic John Smith IV where no one has been confused along the way”, the birth certificate names are exactly as follows:
John Smith
John Smith
John Smith
John Smith
… and the “IV” is never part of the name, and is only used when there would be present confusion* if it was left out.
- By “present confusion” I mean someone here and now would be genuinely confused about who’s being referred to, as opposed to the historical record not matching today’s conversation - because the latter isn’t important.
It’s probably not, because women named for heir mothers are not nearly as common as men named for their fathers. But women who were named after their mothers, even in an unbroken line going back 5 or 10 generations don’t use suffixes because of that “née” in your post. Each of those Barbaras only shared her name with her mother ( and could therefore be Barbara Jr.) until she married. They find other ways to distinguish themselves, just like lots of men do - not all men distinguish themselves from similarly named relatives by using numbers or Jr/Sr.
Not really. At least, not in the US.
I’m an American in my fifties. I’ve been told this “rule” several times about people moving up (Jr. becoming Sr. when Sr. dies, etc.), and I have to say it isn’t my experience at all.
I went to high school with two kids (separate families, just so we’re clear) who used IV after their names. They appeared that way in the program and everything. I know in one case the father (III) was alive, but not the grandfather or great-grandfather. Don’t know about the other guy, but I’d be surprised if his great-grandfather was still ticking at that point.
In my own family my mother’s father was Jr. and her older brother, my uncle, was III. My uncle was referred to at least informally within the family as “initial initial initial the third” long after Sr. and Jr. had moved on. (Question: in this situation Jr. actually predeceased Sr. According to this rule, does III then “officially” become Jr., or does it not work that way?)
Similar to a couple of other people, I once knew a Third who went by Three. I doubt he is now going by One or Two, though i assume at least one of his father or grandfather is now dead.
I suspect, as a couple of other people have hinted, that the “rule” makes some sense (maybe) when the primary purpose is to distinguish two people with the same name. (I say “maybe” because I don’t see how the goal of distinguishing people is helped when their suffixes keep changing, but I guess that’s just me.) But when the person sees the suffix as an important part of the name there’s no way he will want to change it. I think of the baseball star Cal Ripken Jr. He became known by that name in part because his dad, also Cal Ripken, was a coach in the majors. So, Junior and Senior. Cal the elder has been dead for twenty years now but Cal the younger is still known as Cal Ripken Jr. The suffix lives.
Other athletes in this situation would be Ken Griffey Jr., whose father was a pretty good major league ballplayer too, and Jackie Bradley Jr., whose father wasn’t, and Robert Griffin III, and all of them seemed to find the suffix pretty important.
One further thought: though my family is white and the Cals Ripken are white, Griffey, Griffin, and Bradley are black, and so were my two classmates back in the seventies. A lot of the time when Americans say that something is a “rule” they mean that it’s something that white people do. I wonder if keeping the suffixes is something that African Americans have done for years and white America hasn’t really noticed? Yeah, yeah, I’m generalizing from a really small sample…just wondering!
The goal of distinguishing people is helped even when the suffixes keep changing because in most cases, it never goes past “Junior”. Yes, some families go to III and a smaller number go past it, but in most cases, it’s not a changing suffix as much as a dropped suffix. When “George Smith Jr’s” father dies, if he drops the junior and becomes “George Smith”, it normally does not cause any confusion as he may well have gone by “George Smith” anyway in contexts where he would not be confused with his father.
There may be something to that, although Griffey would not be an example (even those who follow the rule about changing/dropping suffixes make exceptions when both father and son are well known, especially in the same field). The only two men I’ve ever known who referred to themselves as “Sr” were both African American
As a Jr. I’ve never heard about it “converting”…
I have less than zero interest in associating myself with my late father, and don’t have a son (if I did, would never name him after myself) - I don’t use it in day to day life, but just consider it a part of my “real” name I’m stuck with (it’s on my SS card, passport, etc.)
Spanish doesn’t use those suffixes, but one of my classmates was the 27th of his name. Sadly there won’t be a 28th who’s a direct descendant, as he died without issue* when we were 15.
The Dukes and Duchesses of Alba (by Duchesses I mean those who have held the title, not by marriage) have been calling their firstborns Cayetano or Cayetana for generations, but I don’t know how many.
And the Colón family’s firstborn male (the guy who will inherit the title of Almirante, whether he also does become an Admiral in the Spanish Navy or not) are also above their 20th Cristóbal, but in their case trying to find information on the current one requires diving through a mountain of information on the first of the name.
- truck driver who couldn’t be arsed take a curve properly. He was on my mind this morning as it was about this time of year; if it’s not the anniversary we’re off by one day.
Around 1992, I remember mention of a purported Christopher Columbus XX being present at some quincentennial ceremony.
The rule of a junior becoming a senior after the senior passes only applies to the suffixes senior and junior. the deceased senior would still be the I and the living son would be II and his son would be III because being dead doesn’t change the fact that you were the first person in your family in a row to have that name. But it still is incredibly rare to see a IV just because most families don’t keep the same name for that long.