[quote=“GreenWyvern, post:40, topic:930350, full:true”]
Okay, this is long, but I hope you’ll find it interesting. [/quote]
Yes, very interesting, thank you for the explanation and all the history. I was always wondering why the Chief of the MacDonalds of Glencoe was called “MacIain”.
You probably aren’t familiar with Steven Cleveland or Thomas Wilson.
But you certainly know [Steven] Grover Cleveland and [Thomas] Woodrow Wilson.
I am. I brought them up above in post 3 of this discussion. (Also, in the case of Grover Cleveland, it would be “Stephen”).
I don’t know if either of those presidents was ever referred to by his middle name by his family; Wilson would likely have used “Woodrow” in public to give his name a grander sound. Perhaps Cleveland did too?
While we’re at American presidents, Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. “Hiram” was in honor of his grandfather, but his family called him Ulysses. Later, Ohio Congressman Thomas Hamer accidentally wrote him down as “Ulysses S. Grant” when nominating him for West Point. This stuck. “Find some name beginning with “S” for me,” Grant wrote to his future wife in an 1844 letter; “You know I have an “S” in my name and don’t know what it stands for.”
I am aware that there is a certain not insignificant percentage of people in the Anglosphere that use their middle name rather than their first, for various reasons. Still, I think those people form a minority. I had gotten the impression the impression that it is, or formerly was, particularly common in certain other societies to go by a name other than the first of one’s given names, and was wondering why. For example, I know for a fact that in the past (let’s say in the 19th and the earlier part of the 20th century), it was an actual custom followed by a sizeable number of French people (though by no means all) to be known by the last of their given names, and was wondering why this might be so in those cultures.
Sorry, just to correct something I wrote in the previous post, I’m not sure Ulysses S. Grant had a grandfather bearing the name “Hiram”, I think I erroneously paraphrased something I found on Wikipedia. I don’t know who, if anyone, the “Hiram” was given him after.
AFAICT this hasn’t been addressed so far, but I don’t think anybody intended you to go away! It’s my understanding that such titles for “princes of the Church” were modeled in ancient and medieval times on the titles of secular royalty and nobility.
So if you were a high dignitary of the church, you’d be identified by your given name (you wouldn’t have a surname) and your dominion: e.g., John, Bishop of Nikiu, or Lewis Antony, Cardinal of Noailles.
Likewise, if you were secular royalty, you’d be identified by your given name and your title: Carlo II, Prince of Genoa, or Mary Queen of Scots.
When prelates and nobility started using surnames, they still kept the honorific of their title in the middle. And that’s how you get George Gordon, Lord Byron, and Timothy, Cardinal Dolan, instead of Lord George Gordon Byron and Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
Nowadays it’s typical to see the honorific placed at the beginning instead, but the older style is still very prevalent. If I’m not mistaken, in fact, it’s still officially correct in formal usage to write “Timothy, Cardinal Dolan”, instead of “Cardinal Timothy Dolan”, although the latter is commonly seen and accepted.
A couple that I’m familiar with that don’t seem to have come up yet:
Jamaica
All of the members of the Jamaican side of my family explicitly have two names, one used by family and one used externally, with no crossover whatsoever – e.g. “Matthew’s” colleagues might be very surprised to hear his family members call him “Erwin” (to them, his name was simply “Matthew” not “Matthew-Erwin”)
My mom told me the reason for this is some quasi-religious tradition of keeping one’s name safe from the Devil. But it should also be noted that in all cases in my family, the public name is a modern, typical British name, whereas the private name is something that may have gone out of favor in the UK, but is still common in Jamaica. Therefore there’s at least partly an aspect of convenience to it: you give your baby a name you like the sound of, but you also give them a public name that will be hassle-free.
China
This kind of leads on from the above. Many young people have a Western name in addition to their Chinese name.
Often it is somewhat based on transliteration: you will meet many “Lilys” because girls whose family name is “Li” are drawn to that name.
But many times it is not a transliteration, and Summer, Seven and Jason for example are all popular choices.
The reason, ISTM, is largely convenience, as non-Chinese speakers may not know how to pronounce Xin Qiyu or whatever, and also have trouble memorizing and differentiating such names (I still do, after 7 years in China). However, the practice is not unique to only those with contact with foreigners, and such names are also often chosen at a fairly young age.
I suspect there are lots of places in the world where people typically have a local or regional name, possibly based on a local dialect, and a more public formal name for wider contexts, possibly in a common tongue.
tl;dr
Sorry, I did miss that line. And apologies to Stephen as well.
It’s common for Indonesians to have only one name. For example Suharto, the president of Indonesia.
Thais don’t have middle names – they’ve had surnames for only about 100 years now – but Thais rarely go by their given name. Every Thai has a nickname, usually bestowed at a very early age, and that is what they go by. In fact, it is not at all uncommon for one’s co-workers to have no clue what your real first name is.
Given that societies are constantly changing and that Japan is slowly losing some of the hierarchy based structures, some groups in Japan may be different, but given names are not as commonly used by adults except in certain circumstances such as “mom friends”.
I’m taking a poll on a Japanese -English language exchange app to find what people say now and one woman said her first name has “disappeared”. Her kids and husband call her “mom” and even her parents do! (Her mother now is “grandma”)
In traditional companies, people are called by their last names or by their titles such as president or manager, and for the latter then either with or without the last name.
There are some exceptions. Think of the baseball player Ichiro; that is his given name. I ran into a few people in work who were known by first names but that was rare.
For friends as adults, it seems more common for women to use given names than men. In a group of friends my wife and I were part of, the women used given names with each other but the men used surnames.
Except that Japanese don’t call them “first names” and “last names” so if you are going to be pedantic then you have to say something like the part of your name written first in Japanese.
Dictionaries list “first name” as one of the translations for 名 “na” (given name). “Given name” or “first name” is often referred to as したの名前 “shitanonamae” or “bottom name” since it’s written below the family name rather than after.
Allowing common people to have 名字 “myoji” (surnames) was only permitted in 1870 after the Meiji Restoration.
Slight hijack. In western European cultures, family names became common among commoners first, and nobility later. In eastern Asian cultures, family names became common among nobility first, and commoners later.