I was watching the movie “Robin Hood: Men in Tights”, a very funny movie, but mods this thread is not about the movie. It stars the actor Cary Elwes. I looked Cary up in Wikipedia and his full name is Ivan Simon Cary Elwes. He was born in London in 1962.
I have read about English people with two middle names, and I always thought it was related somehow to the Church of England, but I haven’t noticed it recently except for royal princes. It seems this practice never caught on in the US.
Does this naming convention still go on today in the UK? Perhaps the apparent decline has to do with the drop in popularity of church-goers. or perhaps it still happens as it always has and I just haven’t noticed it lately, except for royalty of course.
So are extra middle names still as popular in England as they always have been or are they less common for some reason?
Firstborn sons in my family - going back a couple of centuries so far as we can tell - get three given names, the middle two of which are father’s and grandfather’s given names.
So I am: MyFirstName Father’s name, Grandfather’s name, LastName
The middle two could be switched by family custom, but it doesn’t matter so long as they’re both there.
Two middle names is not the norm in the UK, but not uncommon either. I would say generally the more of the ‘male’, ‘older’, ‘upper class/upper middle class’ boxes you tick the more likely you are to have more than one middle name, but that is hardly the rule.
Myself I have two middle names and I am from the UK, one is the name of my grandfather and one is the maiden name of an 18th century female ancestor and is a middle name that my father, grandfather, great-grandfather and even further back had.
My mother, who is Canadian but mostly of English heritage, was christened with 4 names. She never liked her full name much and eventually had a legal name change to eliminate one and cut one of the others in half.
American here. My wife’s brothers each have two middle names; that’s from the English side of the family. The girls had one middle name. The idea was that they’d get married and keep the original last name as a second middle name. Hmm.
On my side of the family there is just one person with two middle names: a cousin born in England and with an English father. Her sister does have just one middle name though.
J R R Tolkien had two middle names. Reuel was his father’s middle name, I don’t know why they added Ronald. Maybe his grandfathers name? His brother also had two middle names.
A friend of mine as University claimed to have about 20 middle names, which he could rattle off if asked (though I only remember the first three any more). His story was that his parents were a little toasted when they were filling out his birth certificate, and when they saw the SIZE of the space then available on the forms for “middle name(s)” they simply couldn’t resist filling it up.
Having never seen a '70s UK birth certificate application form, I have no way to judge the accuracy of this claim. But his list was certainly consistent each time he recited it…
It could be that there was the “because family” middle name and the “because we like it” middle name.
My three paternal cousins were named like that. There is a Family Middle Name in our family which has been passed around through about 30 people (which is SUCH A BORING THING TO DO - I ditched it at the first sensible opportunity) - I guess my uncle and aunt couldn’t bring themselves to omit it completely, so the cousins are all Name Name FMN Surname.
Me and my brother just got lumped with the FMN and no leavening. Ripped. Off.
To the best of my knowledge, registration has always been done by telling the registrar the information that needs to be entered, though I suppose they could still have been affected by the sight of the space the registrar had available…
I don’t think there’s any religious explanation for the number of given names. More likely, it’s a matter of pleasing both sides of the family (particularly for firstborns), or some compromise along the lines of “I can’t stand your choice of names, so let’s add one more and they can pick another later if they want”. My family is far from upper crust, but my father had two middle names and so do my brother and his eldest son, in both cases to make sure both parents’ families are acknowledged. It’s not unknown for football fanatics to at least try to register a son with the names of every member of their team, and they’re not likely to be that high on the social ladder.
Some aristocrats do go in for famously eccentric name choices, but also there may be inheritances at stake depending on the choice of names.
John was Tolkien’s grandfather’s first name. I can’t find anything just offhand which explains why Ronald is one of his middle names. Interestingly, Tolkien always went by Ronald among his family members.
My aunt (English) has three middle names. There is a religious reason for Catholics, adding a confirmation name is common here and apparently in Ireland, according to my Irish friends. That’s why my aunt added her third, as she converted (to Catholic, not to Irish, though her husband is from an Irish family). I don’t know why she was given two initially; her sister, my mother, only had one. I’m not 100% sure (as I’m younger and don’t do religion), but I think her kids got one from birth then added a confirmation name too. Her daughter’s kids got two from birth, I think a name from each side of the family. Why, I don’t know, I don’t question people’s naming choices, at least in their hearing.
I, on the other hand, have no middle names*. The rest of the family are hogging them.
*I had a thoroughly surreal conversation about this with one of the aforementioned Irish friends, in which the facts that my family are atheist, so I’ve not been Christened, and also that I had no middle name came up. I said I’d always felt a bit cheated at not having one, and he replied “Well, apart from your confirmation name of course”
Apparently he’d somehow never twigged that it was a Catholic thing, and he was utterly confused by my not having one. He’s a strident atheist, but definitely a Catholic atheist.
Thanks for this–I was just going to query on it. My Mother, may her memory be a blessing, was rescued as a child from the Nazis by the good people of Pescara and Città Sant’Angelo, as I had always known–“everyone knows you’re a Jew, boom-boom-boom, you’re Catholic, and get yourself into school”–and, ironically/paradoxically/profoundly-to-me, as she drifted into Alzheimer’s she upped with “my name was Maria Carlotta [maybe one more name] family name.”
Charlotte was her grandmother’s name, and I assumed Maria was de jure. Is that true?
But here, at least, the confirmation name does not become part of the legal name. My confirmation name appears nowhere but in Catholic records. Is it added to the legal name in Ireland?
My daughter has two middle names: one had great personal significance to me, and one is my late mother’s first name. When it was time for her to pick a confirmation name, she couldn’t decide on one, so the church used her first name again. so in the Church, she’s something akin to “Carlotta Grace Anna Carlotta.”
Coincidentally, perhaps, she’s no longer Catholic.
