Curlyjimsam wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 8:56 am
Not quite the same thing, but a lot of Kings of Sweden sandwich a regnal number between two personal names, e.g. Carl XVI Gustaf.
You see this elsewhere as well: Alexios I Komnenos, for instance.
"Komnenos" is a surname, though - the tradition for the later Byzantine emperors is to refer to them by their personal name, then their regnal number, then their family name or a toponymic name (e.g. Romanos I Lekapenos, from the town of Lakape). Alexios Komenos is thus equivalent to "Elizabeth II Windsor".
Pedantry: "Windsor" is the name of the royal house, but it isn't a surname. The British royal family have never had surnames; their royal houses have been terms of convenience, often only applied after the fact. Some of them have descended from surnames - the House of Stuart were descendents of Henry Stuart, and the House of Tudor were descendents of Owain Tudor - but the surnames weren't used by the houses themselves (except that I think Mary Stuart used a surname when out of power in France). The House of Hanover didn't get their name from a surname, as their founder didn't have a surname either, and although he had a title, that wasn't used either (he was George, Duke of Brunswick-Lueneburg), so it's just named after a place they came from.
The current House have, as it were, two latent surnames: members styled Royal Highness have the right to the surname 'Windsor', while all others have the right to the surname 'Mountbatten-Windsor'. Royals who don't have surnames have used 'Mountbatten-Windsor' in the past when surnames have been required. On the other hand, Princes William (who has been William Mountbatten-Windsor in a court case) and Harry have also used the 'surname' 'Wales'.
Since this name comes from the marriage of Elizabeth and Philip, and it was Elizabeth's decree that created it, it's likely that if Elizabeth herself had a surname in some sense it would probably be Mountbatten-Windsor, rather than Windsor.
Salmoneus wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 6:21 pm
Pedantry: "Windsor" is the name of the royal house, but it isn't a surname. The British royal family have never had surnames; their royal houses have been terms of convenience, often only applied after the fact. Some of them have descended from surnames - the House of Stuart were descendents of Henry Stuart, and the House of Tudor were descendents of Owain Tudor - but the surnames weren't used by the houses themselves (except that I think Mary Stuart used a surname when out of power in France). The House of Hanover didn't get their name from a surname, as their founder didn't have a surname either, and although he had a title, that wasn't used either (he was George, Duke of Brunswick-Lueneburg), so it's just named after a place they came from.
The current House have, as it were, two latent surnames: members styled Royal Highness have the right to the surname 'Windsor', while all others have the right to the surname 'Mountbatten-Windsor'. Royals who don't have surnames have used 'Mountbatten-Windsor' in the past when surnames have been required. On the other hand, Princes William (who has been William Mountbatten-Windsor in a court case) and Harry have also used the 'surname' 'Wales'.
Since this name comes from the marriage of Elizabeth and Philip, and it was Elizabeth's decree that created it, it's likely that if Elizabeth herself had a surname in some sense it would probably be Mountbatten-Windsor, rather than Windsor.
Also fair. I guess I was just illustrating it with what her surname would (or could) be, if she had one. Though the whole "British royals don't have a last name" has always struck me as somewhat of a fiction - in Europe, 99% of the time, the name of the dynasty is the last name. We know the name of the dynasty, and what do you know, it shows up right where you'd expect it, as a last name, among more distant members of the House of Windsor.
And it kind of gets into the thing where with some dynasties people will say "Well technically it can't be a last name because it's not a name, it's the place they came from! Using it as a last name is like calling a guy named Alex who was born in Cleveland 'Alex Cleveland'!" - and it's like, um, yes, that's how last names work. That's where like, probably half or more last names in many European countries came from, it's why we see "Paris" and "London" as last names.
People say the same thing about Da Vinci. It's very annoying. "It's like calling Barack Obama 'Mr. From Honolulu'!" Yes, that's perfectly fine. "Da Vinci" is a perfectly good last name; if it wasn't one he used, it's one we gave him and there's no reason we shouldn't.
Vijay wrote: ↑Thu Jan 03, 2019 9:42 pm
Malayalees have a pretty wide variety of naming conventions. It's not uncommon for people to have only one name. One of our family friends not only had only one name but also came from an area where many other people also had only one name that was the same as his.
My understanding of the traditional naming convention in our family (and generally in Mar Thoma families) is as follows:
1. Every child's last name is their father's first name (at least until they get married).
2. The firstborn son's first name is his father's father's first name (which is the same as his father's last name. In other words, the firstborn son's name is just the reverse of his father's name).
3. The firstborn daughter's first name is her father's mother's first name.
4. The second-born son's first name is his mother's father's first name.
EDIT: 5. The second-born daughter's first name is her mother's mother's first name.
6. If these rules cannot be followed for some reason, the parents may pick a name of their choice. This is also the rule for any child who isn't the first- or second-born son or daughter.
How common is it for Keralites to have proper surnames, though? I ask because one of my coworkers, who's a Malayalam speaker from Kerala, has a proper surname that happens to be exceptionally long.
(In contrast, my other coworker from Kerala has only a given name. This has led to a smattering of ways of how the name is presented in various locations. Equally unfortunate is that her given name is a homophone for the French word for "pussy".)
aka vampireshark
The other kind of doctor.
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vampireshark wrote: ↑Tue Jan 22, 2019 8:42 amHow common is it for Keralites to have proper surnames, though? I ask because one of my coworkers, who's a Malayalam speaker from Kerala, has a proper surname that happens to be exceptionally long.
Very common. Family names tend to be very long but are not necessarily the same thing as surnames. I think people from the Nair caste (or perhaps just Malayalee Hindus more generally) do tend to use their family name as their surname, which is why it's so long. The family name tends to be an indicator of where the family traditionally lives.
As far as I'm aware, people regardless of religion use their family names as their home address in Kerala. My own family name is Chelikuzhiyil [t͡ʃɛˈɭɪkuɻijɪl], which literally means 'in the mud pit'. I've heard at least three stories about how we ended up with that name.
In contrast, my other coworker from Kerala has only a given name. This has led to a smattering of ways of how the name is presented in various locations. Equally unfortunate is that her given name is a homophone for the French word for "pussy".
Ah yes, the popular girls' name Minu.
One (Nair) guy we used to be neighbors with also originally had only a given name. His real name was [t̪əmˈbaːn], which is a very common name in Kerala; in fact, where he came from, it was so common that his teacher decided he had too many students with his name and randomly assigned new names to all of them. His new name was Ramachandran, but then when he immigrated here, IIRC that officially became both his first and his last name, and then later, he reduced his official first name to just "Ram."
One thing I cannot help but mention is the American tendency to reuse names which were traditionally surnames as first names (and often as male names first, and later for the same names as female names), to the point that it is often forgotten that these names were originally surnames. My own family is an example of this, where both me and my sister have surnames-as-first names, and my sister in turn did the same with her two kids. (One thing I note is almost always are the names used for this English, Scottish, or Irish in origin; you practically never see, say, a German, Italian, or Polish surname used as a first name.)
Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jan 24, 2019 12:04 pm(One thing I note is almost always are the names used for this English, Scottish, or Irish in origin; you practically never see, say, a German, Italian, or Polish surname used as a first name.)
That only makes sense given that Italians and Poles are overwhelmingly Catholic and Catholic naming traditions are among the most conservative in the USA.
It's not actually a requirement in the RCC that given names be saints' names, but it is such a powerful tradition that many if not most Catholics grew up thinking it was. And it is absolutely the case that priests have refused to baptize children with names that couldn't be found in the calendar of saints. My own late husband is an example of this: His given name was a (Scottish) surname and his baptismal name is officially that hyphenated with the name "Joseph", his legal middle name, because the priest wouldn't baptize him with that name alone. I come from a large (German-American) Catholic family and no one in my generation or the generation before has a name which isn't Biblical or associated with a saint. I can think of one exception in the next generation and my mother's sister completely blew a gasket when she found out that's what my cousins were going to name their son.
I'll go further and say that using family names as given names is a tradition I associate primarily with WASPs. Particularly in the South, it was a way of preserving a maternal surname into the next generation. Ethnically, white Southern Protestants are overwhelmingly English, Scottish, and Scots-Irish, so it's not surprising that the most common given names derived from surnames are too. I can think of a smattering of examples from Dutch (e.g. Roosevelt), German (e.g. Meyer), and French (e.g. Bardot), but they stand out as exceptions.
Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jan 24, 2019 12:04 pm(One thing I note is almost always are the names used for this English, Scottish, or Irish in origin; you practically never see, say, a German, Italian, or Polish surname used as a first name.)
That only makes sense given that Italians and Poles are overwhelmingly Catholic and Catholic naming traditions are among the most conservative in the USA.
It's not actually a requirement in the RCC that given names be saints' names, but it is such a powerful tradition that many if not most Catholics grew up thinking it was. And it is absolutely the case that priests have refused to baptize children with names that couldn't be found in the calendar of saints. My own late husband is an example of this: His given name was a (Scottish) surname and his baptismal name is officially that hyphenated with the name "Joseph", his legal middle name, because the priest wouldn't baptize him with that name alone. I come from a large (German-American) Catholic family and no one in my generation or the generation before has a name which isn't Biblical or associated with a saint. I can think of one exception in the next generation and my mother's sister completely blew a gasket when she found out that's what my cousins were going to name their son.
I'll go further and say that using family names as given names is a tradition I associate primarily with WASPs. Particularly in the South, it was a way of preserving a maternal surname into the next generation. Ethnically, white Southern Protestants are overwhelmingly English, Scottish, and Scots-Irish, so it's not surprising that the most common given names derived from surnames are too. I can think of a smattering of examples from Dutch (e.g. Roosevelt), German (e.g. Meyer), and French (e.g. Bardot), but they stand out as exceptions.
I should note, though, that in my family my mother's side is Polish Catholic (even though my mother herself is ex-Catholic) and the in-laws' family is also Polish, yet that has not stopped my parents from naming both me and my sister and my sister and her husband from naming their two kids with surnames as given names.
Using surnames as middle names is a traditional practice in the UK - it's fallen out of use, but it used to be virtually universal, at least in the upper classes. Sometimes those middle names became the name by which the individual was known, particularly where many people in the family shared their first name (some families would have virtually every male named Jack, in particular...). As a result, when naming people after that person, sometimes they'd be named after their middle name (originally a surname).
For instance, P(elham) G(renville) Wodehouse was named after P(elham) G(eorge) von Donop, his godfather. PG von Donop was named after his father, Edward Pelham Brenton von Donop (PG von Donop's brother was Stanley Brenton von Donop). So these names get passed up from surname to middle name to forename. [I don't know how Wodehouse ended up with 'Grenville', but that's obviously also a surname in origin.]
To take a US example: John Quincy Adams was given the surname of a maternal relative, but since both he and his father were John Adams, aiui he was commonly known as 'John Quincy' or just as 'Quincy' in private. A few decades later in American politics we see the process continue to its conclusion: Speaker of the House Galusha Grow was born Aaron Galusha Grow ('Galusha' being the surname of a governor of vermont), but his family called him 'Galusha', and he always reversed his given names, and hence is always known as Galusha A. Grow. His successor as speaker was Schuyler Colfax, son of Schuyler Colfax, named after his mother's surname.
[and a counterexample to the 'english/celtic only' rule - the Schuylers were thoroughly integrated into anglophone society (they went over in 1650), but they were originally Dutch.]
[speaking of the New Amsterdam aristocracy, there's an interesting example later on: James Roosevelt named one son Franklin Delano (Delano for his mother, I don't know who Franklin was), but the other James Roosevelt. Yes, James Roosevelt Roosevelt. He didn't call himself Roosevelt Roosevelt officially, but he was known as 'Rosy' to friends and family. I don't know if he was named after his father, though - the entire family spent hundreds of years almost exclusively marrying their relatives, so far as I can see, so there were lots of other Roosevelts to be named after...]
So I think this naming practice was imported from the UK to American very early on. As it was always a UK tradition, it was obviously more common among UK-derived Americans, and to a lesser extent those with whom they intermarried and socialised. (I seem to recall the same tradition was known in France and Germany historically, but I think it was much less common)
Interestingly, the big difference between the UK and the US (in this regard) is that the tradition was almost wiped out in the UK (most modern examples are just re-imports from the US), whereas in the US it flourished. I think this is due to class.
This was, so far as I'm aware, originally an upper-class practice - as it's a way of publicising access to power networks (these names were most often taken from either living in-laws or from godparents), which was primarily a concern of people who did at least tangentially have access to power networks. (eg, one reason Schuyler Colfax Sr got 'Schuyler' as a first name was perhaps the fact that his mother's cousin was a famous general by that name - the sort of thing it paid to advertise).
In the US, I think that the upper-class nature of this practice became aspirational. It spread, first through the political and business elites, and then to the ordinary people who admired them. [via the American Rich Guy stereotype of the I(initial) Surname Surname form].
In the UK, on the other hand, as the elite lost power, it became seen as something elitist and old-fashioned, and fell spectacularly from favour.
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Incidentally, the earlist example I know of this is the original Spencer Compton, born 1601 - I think he may even have predated the general practice of adopting surnames as middle names. William Compton, the Earl of Northampton, had married a commoner, Sir John Spencer, Lord Mayor of London - a man so rich and powerful that he was once accused of creating a monopoly over all trade with Tripoli. It could be that the Earl wanted to advertise his rich and influential inlaw. But I suspect the reason was more personal: Spencer hated the idea of his daughter marrying the Earl and locked her in his house, and this opposition was not softened when Compton daringly rescued her, smuggling her out of the house in a baker's basket. He couldn't stop the marriage, but he did refuse to offer any dowry. It may be that Compton thought (wrongly) that naming his son after his estranged father-in-law would heal the rift, or at least net him a delayed dowry.
(I say 'original' because another Spencer Compton became Prime Minister, a couple of generations later).
Using a surname as a first name is pretty unheard of in Ashkenazi culture
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him! kårroť
Salmoneus wrote: ↑Thu Jan 24, 2019 3:53 pm
[and a counterexample to the 'english/celtic only' rule - the Schuylers were thoroughly integrated into anglophone society (they went over in 1650),
One thing I should note about the Dutch in America is that they integrated into Anglo society early on, and the Dutch on the East Coast far predate much of the later immigration, so it is not surprising that they pattern more with the English in this respect than do, say, the Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, or Scandinavians (while there were early German immigrants, they did not integrate nearly as quickly as the Dutch did).
From personal experience it's fairly rare for people in England to have middle names that are normally surnames, let alone as first names, though the conventions seem to becoming more common in the last decade or so for boys, & even doesn't seem too rare for girls.
When when I was at school (1982-94) I think of only one person who had what was usually a surname as a forename, & seemed very rare at the time.
That history of surnames being used as first names is very interesting. It looks like we've got a step-by-step transformation in use: surname > middle name > male given name > unisex given name > female given name.
What's interesting about this is that, in English, it seems to be an almost ironclad law that names can only go male > female. And it only happens to male given names that used to be surnames. How does that happen? It's not as if the typical modern-day American knows that "Morgan" was originally a last name, while "Anton" has always been a given name, right? You'd think a few non-surnames would've got caught up in the male > female flow. I can't think of any non-surname male > female given names offhand.
The seemingly absolute prohibition against female names becoming male names is also remarkable, if a bit less interesting. If English surnames first came to be used as given names via being given to men, and only former surnames are eligible for gender swapping, then it would be a trivial consequence that it could only go male > female.
It also reminds me a bit of fashion: It's considered acceptable and normal for women to wear originally-male clothes, e.g. pants and suits, but even to this day there are very few originally female articles of clothing that men may acceptably wear in mainstream fashion.
One name with an interesting usage is "Cheyenne". It's originally a place name and demonym, but of such recent origin that it's never been a surname - and it resembles historical English names that incorporate "Ann", like "Mary-Anne" and "Lou-Anne". Yet it seems to have been adopted simultaneously in American English as both a female and male given name.
missals wrote: ↑Sat Jan 26, 2019 7:00 pm
That history of surnames being used as first names is very interesting. It looks like we've got a step-by-step transformation in use: surname > middle name > male given name > unisex given name > female given name.
What's interesting about this is that, in English, it seems to be an almost ironclad law that names can only go male > female. And it only happens to male given names that used to be surnames. How does that happen? It's not as if the typical modern-day American knows that "Morgan" was originally a last name, while "Anton" has always been a given name, right? You'd think a few non-surnames would've got caught up in the male > female flow. I can't think of any non-surname male > female given names offhand.
That's just the general law of name drift, I don't think it's related to surname status. There are plenty of other names that have crossed over to become female, or at least unisex - Robin, Lesley, Shirley, Tracey, Vivian, Hyacinth, Jamie, etc etc. As Terry Pratchett once observed: in two hundred years the only names available for English-speaking men will be Hank, Earl and Butch...
It's natural given modern gender roles - women are encouraged to adopt traditionally male gender roles, and part of encouraging them is giving them a strong, tomboyish name; but men are castigating for failing to live up to male gender roles, and part of that is by making sure there's not even the slightest possibility their name might encourage them to act a bit girly. So anything that isn't 100% masculine is gradually abandoned by boys and adopted by girls.
In the case of surname names, as with natural world names, there's no inherent gender anyway, so it's particularly easy for them to become feminine.
missals wrote: ↑Sat Jan 26, 2019 7:00 pm
One name with an interesting usage is "Cheyenne". It's originally a place name and demonym, but of such recent origin that it's never been a surname - and it resembles historical English names that incorporate "Ann", like "Mary-Anne" and "Lou-Anne". Yet it seems to have been adopted simultaneously in American English as both a female and male given name.
missals wrote: ↑Sat Jan 26, 2019 7:00 pm
One name with an interesting usage is "Cheyenne". It's originally a place name and demonym, but of such recent origin that it's never been a surname - and it resembles historical English names that incorporate "Ann", like "Mary-Anne" and "Lou-Anne". Yet it seems to have been adopted simultaneously in American English as both a female and male given name.
See also “Dakota(h)”.
Madison is a mostly female first name that slightly surprising in it's use as I would have expected it to have been given to boys due to the president James Maddison.
