I have a cousin who has the first name “Robson.” His father chose it for his mother’s side of the family (my side, as it were). Since they didn’t have the Robson last name, he figured his son could just go by a diminutive or nickname (Robin or Rob). Works fine. No pretension.
I’ve come across this before, the mother’s maiden name as the child’s name or middle name.
It’s nothing new. For example, Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis & Clark fame, received his mother’s maiden name.
And Clark Kent of Lois & Clark fame received his mother’smaiden name.
In my family, not at all wealthy or aristocratic, for three generations now, all children have received my paternal grandmother’s maiden name as a middle name.
The upper crust names are simple caricatures. There may have been one or two individuals who held them but most of them were the inventions of lower class satirists.
Harvard did a time capsule for the Class of 1900.
Paul Revere Frothingham is a funny name. Charles James White isn’t. About 99% are ordinary. And not one single Junior, let alone a III or a IV.
Upper-class Britons often (though not always) have titles of some sort (Duke, Lord, Sir, the Hon, etc) to distinguish themselves from the lower classes. Americans must reley on their names.
Here’s what Miss Emily Post had to say on the matter back in the '20s.
I just had to drop in to say that this made me laugh.
For anybody who hasn’t read the book: Everything in it is backed up heavily with statistics. Which isn’t to say their conclusions are always right or their analysis necessarily takes everything into account, but the stats are definitely there.
Trivia - Chatsworth and Osborne are both major streets in the San Fernando Valley (The Valley) section of Los Angeles. The writers were using an old trick for coming up with character names by using street names, but with the intent of sounding “upper crust”.
What about Milton and Armitage, who was the character that Chatsworth replaced?
alphaboi867 writes:
> Upper-class Britons often (though not always) have titles of some sort (Duke,
> Lord, Sir, the Hon, etc) to distinguish themselves from the lower classes.
No, they don’t. I’ll let some Brits correct me if I’m wrong about this. I lived in the U.K. from 1987 to 1990, so I’m going by my memory. The number of Brits with titles is pretty small compared with the number above any given level of income or with the number who in social status are similarly high-level.
My dad told me the funny story about the successful factory owner who bought himself a peerage (house of lords title?). When selecting his peerage name, he chose the name of the street his factory was on. That way, everyone would think the street was named after him.
Recently, the purchasable peerage has been a place for the truly pretentious. Lord Black, whose real name is Conrad Black bought one. He was a expelled from the best school in Canada, allegedly for cheating. he first got rich in business by “persuading” the widow of a partner to sell out the whole corporation (details are disputed). He also made money running several businesses into the ground, and was the impetus behind a Canadian law making it illegal for a company to remove money from pension funds. He built a media empire by the simple expedient of buying up newspapers, cutting costs below bone level, and milking the funds from shareholders with questionable management tactics - for which he’s currently doing time in US prison. Such are the upper crust of titled British society, bought and paid for.
Re: use of family/last names as personal/first names. I attended a family reunion a couple of years ago. My extended family does come from what could be considered southern aristocracy - old money, mostly from plantation ownership back in the day, captains of industry, etc.
It was a running joke in the car on the way home that apparently, our family had been issued a finite number of names and had to come up with new combinations using only those names.
FirstName1 LastName1 would be related to LastName1 LastName2.
LastName2 LastName3 would be related to FirstName2 LastName1.
FirstName3 LastName1 would be related to LastName2 FirstName1.
etc.
There were about five last names that were used as last, first, or middle names throughout the five hundred or so people there.
You can’t directly buy a peerage, although being a generous donor to party funds tends to expedite the matter. I’m not sure why Conrad Black got his though, as it was Tony Blair who put him forward, and Black and his newspaper were no friends of the Labour Party.
Nope, not major streets.
Another example - a talented writer but a scummy guy: Jeffrey Archer - Wikipedia