Naming traditions
Firstly I apologise for responding so tardily to the thoroughly interesting and informative article The Name Game in the July issue. I’m a teacher so tend to catch up on my reading in the holidays! I thought and hoped that you might be interested to know why I love the tradition of people using their mother’s maiden names in later generations.
Until I moved to Cumbria some years ago I had not appreciated how common it was to use the maiden names of ancestors as middle names. I moved to a small Cumbrian village and while chatting to locals in the pub I mentioned that I was an amateur genealogist, which led to much general conversation. About a week later when I entered the pub I was greeted with: “John, this is the lady who’ll be able to find out where your name comes from”. Somewhat reluctantly, I was persuaded to try to find out why John’s middle name was Birbeck. I said, “It’ll probably be your grandmother’s name”.
John then informed me that his grandfather had been John Birbeck too and that, despite not knowing where the name came from, he had named his son John Birbeck.
After much hard work the puzzle was solved some four months later when I discovered that John’s 3x great grandmother had been Mary Birbeck. In the 200 years since Mary Birbeck got married, 11 of her descendants
have been given the name Birbeck. There are at least 121 other incidences in this family where other maiden surnames have been used for Christian names.
In doing this research for John Birbeck, I was introduced to his brother with whom I now happily share my life. So I am profoundly grateful to Mary Birbeck and the Cumbrian naming tradition; long may it continue! Sarah Lee Editor replies: There can’t be many who can claim to have started their partner’s family history research before even meeting them!