Wait – does that mean that:
Ole & Lena get married, and have a daughter Helga, named Helga Olson. Then Ole & Lena have a bitter divorce, Helga stays with her mother, who chooses to rename her to Helga Lenasdottir?
Seems rather confusing.
You must be misremembering this. The Swedish -dotter names were always based on the father’s name too. If Lars and Lena were brother and sister with a father named Hans their names would be Lars Hansson and Lena Hansdotter.
I once knew a family with a grandmother, mother, and daughter who were named Gwendolyn, Gwenda Lynn, and Gwen Delynn, respectively.
My sister Mary has the same birth name as her mother, but Mom went by Mary Ann, and over time somehow changed it to Marian, which gradually even became her legal name. She never had a birth certificate or any other birth records, so her legal name is based on customary usage.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen the first example of this I ever encountered. Perhaps Cecil thought it was such common knowledge that it didn’t need mention. After Rick Redfern and Joan Caucus moved in together, one day while Rick was at home and Joanie was at work, there was a knoch at the door. When Rick opened it, there was a young woman. I don’t recall the exact words that ensued, but eventually Rick asked, “Who are you?” and the young woman replied, “I’m Joan Junior.” Later, after she took up with Michael Doonesbury she was always referred to as “JJ,” so I think most readers forgot that.
I can cite a straightforward example from my own experience:
My mother-in-law was Clarissa Jean Aldridge, and she and my father-in-law named their first child Clarissa Jean Aldridge II. (In case you’re wondering, mom went by “Jean” and daughter goes by “Jeanie.”)
So there you are. It may be unusual, but it happens.
I think it’s fine to call Bush 43 “George Bush, Jr.”, as a distinguisher, especially among those who aren’t up on their presidential chronology. It’s not something printed on the birth certificate. Of course, he is neither George HW Bush, Jr. nor George W Bush, Jr.
“Junior” means “the younger”, not “the younger person with exactly the same name”, W. is quite correctly known as “George Bush, Jr.”.
By the way, one reason that women are rarely called “Junior” is that, not that long ago, women weren’t supposed to be mentioned by name in public, anyway, except at their marriages and their funerals, and, in between, they were “Mrs. [husband’s full name]”. Widows, if they had a son who was a “Junior”, became “Mrs. [husband’s full name], Senior”. (Living men were never “Senior”, and ceased being “Junior” when their fathers died, unless they were royalty or practically royalty, like American millionaires.)
Everything else in your post I agree with, but this one strikes me as odd. Are you sure about that?
Powers &8^]
Credit to Judith Martin, alias “Miss Manners”. You got occasional cases where the son was a celebrity and the father wasn’t, where the father would end up being “Senior” for clarity, but, as a rule, John Doe became John Doe, Sr., only when he died, while his wife went from being Mrs. John Doe to being Mrs. John Doe, Sr.
These are only customs, of course, and change from place to place and from time to time. Until I was a toddler, Elizabeth Tudor was “Queen Elizabeth”, and only became “Queen Elizabeth I” when there was a “Queen Elizabeth II”, but, on the other hand, Pope Francis is “Francis I”, and the old Austrian Emperor was “Franz Josef I”.
From the trivia desk: A long string of Barbara’s was in the news recently when an old skeleton was unearthed. (Source.)
1 Cicely Nevill, ‘the Rose of Raby’ b. 3 May 1415 d. 31 May 1495
(Cicely was the mother of King Richard III)
2 Anne of York b. 10 Aug 1439 d. 14 Jan 1476
3 Anne St.Leger b. 1476 d. 21 Apr 1526
4 Katherine Manners d. Aft 1558
5 Barbara Constable d. Abt 1558
6 Margaret Babthorpe d. 1628
7 Barbara Cholmeley d. 28 Feb 1619
8 Barbara Belasyse b. Est 1609 d. 31 Dec 1641
9 Barbara Slingsby
10 Barbara Talbot b. Abt 1671 d. 31 Jan 1763
11 Barbara Yelverton
12 Barbara Calthorpe b. Abt 1716 d. 13 Apr 1782
13 Barbara Gough b. 21 Mar 1746 d. 1826
14 Barbara Spooner d. 1847
15 Barbara Wilberforce d. 30 Dec 1821
16 Barbara Wilberforce James
14 Anne Spooner b. 1780 d. 1873
15 Charlotte Vansittart-Neale b. 1817 d. 10 Jan 1881
16 Charlotte Vansittart Frere b. 1846 d. Abt 1917
17 Muriel Charlotte Folliott Stokes b. 1884 d. 25 May 1961
18 Muriel Joyce Brown b. 25 May 1926 d. 2008
19 Leslie Ibsen
(Leslie is the mother of the man chosen for mtDNA comparison)
I’m inclined to think that the reason girls don’t get saddled with Jr. or II is that most people shrug and say it doesn’t matter because girls names are only temporary anyway. The names change when the girls get married (because we still have this weird sexist tradition). Case in point: My mother and my oldest sister have the same first and middle names. But their last names changed when they got married. There was an overlap of about 20 years where they had the same last name as each other, but even then they had different birth names.
Suppose “Alice Betty Callahan”, grows up and marries Bob Johnson then calls herself Alice Johnson. They name their daughter Alice Betty Johnson, who grows up and marries Dave Smith, then calls herself Alice Smith. While the daughter is growing up, she’s Alice Betty Johnson and her mother is also Alice Betty Johnson, but that’s only half the story. Her mother would be more accurately described as “Alice Betty Johnson nee Callahan” (or Alice Callahan Johnson) and any loan application, for example, would surely ask her what her maiden name was. It would take a fair dose of incompetence to mix up the two people. And then when the daughter gets married, she’s known as Alice Betty Smith nee Johnson (or Alice Johnson Smith).
This is completely different from the case of a boy named Andrew Barney Davis at birth who will stay Andrew Barney Davis his whole life and then when he grows up and gets married and has a son decides to name is son Andrew Barney Davis, knowing that person will likely have the exact same name his whole life. So they put “jr” after it so that legal documents can tell the two people apart.