WHAT’S IN A MIDDLE NAME?
AMIDDLE name can also be a lovely way of remembering someone. For example, my mother died when she was 39 leaving behind a husband and three children under 12. It is strange how, decades on, you can still miss a parent whose voice you don’t even remember. But to keep my somewhat blurry memory alive, we chose my mum’s unusual first name, Ray, as a middle name for our daughter. It’s the best name decision my wife and I ever made.
I am proud of my own somewhat bizarre middle name, a family relic – it is Chandos since you ask, and no sniggering thank you very much – and I have passed it on (along with my LP collection) to my second son as his middle name. He is in turn proud of it, if secretly.
Giving a child a middle name has been popular only for about a century. This is to do with the effect of two world wars. In those conflicts almost every family lost a close relative and a middle name was a good way to commemorate that father/son/brother/uncle who didn’t come home. A baby girl’s middle name would, likewise, often commemorate a wife and mother who struggled on in the after-shock.
Our stock of middle names is in effect a roll of honour. Today, James, Louis, John and Rose are the most popular four middle names. They belong to an age when first names were unflashy (or to some rather boring) long before anyone had thought up Kylie, Apple or Jayden.
Names you once wouldn’t have MYSTERY STATES: What does the K stand for in JK Rowling? And, right, US actor Dakota Johnson dared call your child are now often first names. The upper and middle classes think nothing of giving their offspring such names as India, Cosmo, Jago, Vita, Zebedee and Zachariah. Indeed one family recently announced the birth of Electra, a sister to Wulfstan, Dorothea and Cleopatra. What happens when that lot get shortened in the playground? To the horror of their parents, those kids could easily end up sounding like residents of Albert Square – ie, Ellie, Stan, Dot and Cleo.
The affectionate shortening of Daily Express Thursday August 24 2017 good old names from 1960s TV sitcoms – Pam, Terry, Pat, Bob – seems to have virtually died out, though I hope I’m wrong about that.
Once ordinary names like Mary, Susan, Mark and Peter might today be used (but probably as middle names) out of nostalgia for the 1950s when children said “crikey!” and drank Horlicks.
There is something depressing about the replacement of our proper English names with the novelty ones that celebrities adore, such as Harper, Madison, Dakota, North and Coco. If you feel you simply have to use one of these names, then they should be middle names, preferably represented by a discreet initial.
President Harry S Truman was often asked what the S stood for and the answer was nothing. His parents just gave him an S for the hell of it.
The actor Richard E Grant added the initial E because there was already a Richard Grant registered with Equity, the actors’ union. Also, his original real name is Richard Grant Esterhuysen.
Initials have a certain mystery, especially on a book jacket. Can anyone name Lord Of The Rings author JRR Tolkien’s names or indeed say what the K stands for in JK Rowling? I have always thought the poet TS Eliot would have been taken less seriously had he just used the name Tom, which is how everyone knew him in private.
A couple of generations ago, 30 names of either sex served pretty much everyone in Britain. Dukes and milkmen were just as likely to be called George or Arthur.
But middle names have proved very handy to politicians in the class war. If you are Left-wing and your first name is James, it has to go. It’s too posh sounding if you want to be a Labour leader. Thus James (Brown) became Gordon, James (Wilson) became Harold. Even Keir Hardie, founder of the Labour Party, was a James until he dropped it for the more rugged sounding middle name Keir.
A judge has ruled that a mother can ditch her child’s embarrassing second name. ROBERT GORE-LANGTON takes a look at what these added titles tell us
MARGARET THATCHER – Maggie to her fans – got terrible stick for having the middle name Hilda, which the snooty end of her own party liked to call her behind her back to remind themselves that she wasn’t one of them.
But Maggie should really have changed the spelling to Hylda, in memory of the great Lancashire comedian Hylda Baker (catchphrase “she knows y’know”), and she’d have won over the North permanently.
With Americans anything goes. Limonjello is actually a name in the US as is Sharmonica. Scarily, no one there thinks it’s particularly odd. But we are fast catching up with the Americans when it comes to strange names. Believe it or not, Clinique is now a boy’s name. How, one wonders, will the British Army survive with a future generation of recruits named after face creams?
Even choosing nice names can have unintended consequences — and could land you in court. Suppose for the sake of argument that the Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry had a daughter he called Isla. What if he chose White as a second name, after the soul singer Barry White? Without realising it, his daughter would be called Isla White Ferry. What on earth would a judge say to that?