In my family, it’s just been a tradition - sons get grandfather’s first names as their middle names. Interestingly, daughters get grandma MAIDEN LAST name - just a tradition.
What I wonder about are those folks, particularly in the American South, who have three, four, five or more “middle” names. For instance, I went to college with a guy who went simply by the name J.T. Sloan - he was a sweet kid from just outside of Gatlinsburg, Tennessee. When you’d probe for the names that went along with the initials, he’d tell you that his “short” name was Jeffery Taylor Sloan. When you’d get a little whiskey into him, and ask the same question, you’d get a story about grandfathers and uncles who served at the foot of General Lee in the war of northern aggression and all, but you’d also find out that JT’s “real” name was, [deep breath] Augustus Zachery Henry Robert David Jeffery Taylor Sloan [/deep breath]
As I mentioned elsewhere on this board my middle name is the surname for an obscure branch of my family that apparantly died out a while ago. My sisters middle names are after specific members of our family so I don’t know why I was different. But then my sisters have fairly less well known Irish names while I have a fairly English name (so I’ve been told)
I have no middle name. The rest of my family has two or three names, followed by their two respective last names. I have just my name and my last names. Of course, my mom made once a joke that she baptized me with María…I must check my records because I swore that it was a joke and my sis told me it is, in fact, my baptism name.
Why the grief? Although he doesn’t have a family name, he has a last name.
About the middle names- I suppose for some people it might be due to first-naming customs. In at least some Italian families, the tradition was that the first son was named after the paternal grandfather. In my family, this led to at least 5 Joseph lastname’s, and even more John anotherlastname’s.(and those are only the relatives close enough for me to know) Since they were sets of first cousins, some of them were close in age and they all lived in the same area. Some of them went to school together, and some grew up to work in the same field.There had to be some way to tell one from the other, and middle names or initials work better for school or work than the how they usually get described in the family (either by some physical feature or by their mother or wife’s name “Which John anotherlastname? Mildred’s husband or Rose’s son?” )
There is a Scottish naming tradition, in which the daughters in a family take the maiden names of their grandmothers. Daughter number one takes the maiden name of the maternal Grandmother, and daughter number two takes the paternal Grandmother’s name (not sure what happens after that; I think the method ends there). It’s a way of continuing on a name through the female line. I would have loved to have continued this tradition with my daughter, but her Grandma has a really ugly surname and she would have been embarrassed about it all her life.
Surnames only came about (in Europe) when population increases lead to the need for more specific names. Same with middle names. The actual form of the names varies regionally, to carry on a surname, honour a relative, take the protection of a saint, etc, but they’re all there basically for more precise identification.
Since we are talking about a wide variety of naming traditions, it might be helpful to use some of these terms more rigorously –
Given name - An individual’s own name or names, usually given at birth by the parents. Most people in America have two given names (the second one being referred to as the “middle name” in this thread, but probably more accurately called a person’s "second given name).
Family name - A name passed on generation-to-generation from parent to child
Christian name - A given name officially confirmed during a baptism under the auspices of Christian belief. Should not be used generally to mean any person’s given name.
Surname - An “extra” name added on to a person’s name, often after adulthood usually to indicate some accomplishment, honour, or notoriety – William the Conqueror, Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. Should not be used to mean a person’s family name.
Patronymic - A name that indicates a person’s direct parentage - not passed on unchanged to one’s children. Common in Icelandic and Russian custom, for example.
Of course, the American terms “first name” and “last name” are too ambiguous to be of any use when discussing varying naming traditions.
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