Does your real name have significance?
 

(inspired by my last post in the married name thread)

As a genealogist naming patterns have always been a big interest of mine. They used to be a VERY precise thing,

1st son = father's father
1st daughter = mother's mother
2nd son = mother's father
2nd daughter = father's mother
3rd son = father
3rd daughter = mother
4th son = father's oldest brother
4th daughter = mother's oldest sister
5th son = father's 2nd oldest brother or mother's oldest brother
5th daughter = mother's 2nd oldest sister or father's oldest sister
2nd wife's oldest daughter named after the first wife, using her full name

It is also common to use:
the mother’s maiden name as a second name;
the surname of close friends as a second name;
give another child exactly the same name as a previous child who had died;
or give a child the name of a relative or friend who had recently died.

I was interested in any stories there might be behind your first or middle name (Im not asking you to tell us what your actual name is) I was thinking along the lines of family naming traditions besides the usual Sr, Jr, etc naming pattern. If YOURS isnt but your childs is lets hear that story too!!

our family tradition is that comes from my fathers side is that the oldest daughter has Faye for a middle name, its been that way for generations and I love it. Luckily I was the oldest daughter, and my only child is a girl so she gets to carry on the tradition too....she loves it so much (you dont meet many people here that go by Faye)...that shes trying to convince everybody to call her that now since her first name is so common. Her given name Amanda, but it wasnt given to her because it was popular, it was because at the time I was preggie with her I made an outstanding breakthru in my research concering her fathers 7th great grandmother and grandfather, if she had been a boy she would have been Elijah.

My own first name (Shannon) was given to me to go with Faye (because my mother wanted an Irish first name to go with my Irish middle name)

My dad co-wrote a biography. My middle name is the subject of the book's last name. I'm probably the only person with that middle name, so I'm not revealing it.

for me.. my initials are the same as my great grandfather...

but on the geneology naming conventions...

you should be interested in Icelandic names...
they use 'son and dottir to distinguish male female offspring.

so Johan Jonson's father was Jon. His daughter is Grimsey Johansdottir, and so forth... most Icelanders can trace back to they Viking times via the Sagas.

and naming an icelander with an official icelandic name requires proof of 2 other icelanders who had it in history.

My first name is my mom's name, my middle name is my great grandmother's name...

that's all I know..

Yes. It caused me total misery and ridicule from the schmucks I grew up with. I also do not appreciate its ethnicity.
Everyone who knows me knows I never - ever - want to hear it spoken.
I have a legal alias and nickname and that is the only name I respond to.

heeeeeeyy! we've got something in common..

My brother got his name from my father's middle name as his first name, and my mother's maiden name as his middle name.

My sister's first name is my mother's middle name and her middle name is my father's mother's middle name.

My name -- they liked the name Ellen - that was going to be my first name, but my father's sister (Eleanor) said that I'd end up with the nickname Ellie, and that rhymed with Smelly -and it was a horrible way to go thru life (guess what her nickname was?) So.... I was still going to be Ellen - -then I opted to show up a few weeks early, and I was born 6 minutes after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and my parents being good little Catholics, tacked Mary on to the front of the Ellen -- My middle name, Catherine, was just pulled out of the air (my father's girlfriend? Who knows) My birth certicifate spells my name as Mary Ellen -- I had it legally changed to all one word when i was in high school, when I got sick to death of being called Mary - because it wasn't my name - -and people couldn't quite grasp that I had two first names.

When I was researching my family tree-- about 4 generations back, on my father's side. there was a Mary Ellen -- so to make myself fit in with my family, that's who I claim I was named after...

Don't you feel like a better person now that you know that?

Excellent!!!! this stuff fascinates me....Im such a geek

My last name is Lithuanian ethnicity... too weird to pronounce, but I don't feel like giving away my last name on here anyways.

Well I knew most people wouldnt... thats why I stated in the original post that I wasnt asking to know the actual name itself

I think I was named after an ex-girlfriend of my Dad's. Well, not named in her honor or anything, he just liked the name.


If I were to have a child (huge if on that one) I want to use my last name as his/her name. Carry the family name on sort of. I've brought it up to my Dad (who had 3 daughters - bye bye family name) and he think's its a horrible idea. So there's that too..

I am the second son and my name is my mother's father's name exactly, although I'd never heard about the tradition before. Very interesting.

ShaniFaye -

Thanks for the post, I didn't know about the tradition behind naming. I'd guess there aren't too many families who get very far down the list these days. Still, back when infant mortality was higher I bet it was commonplace to use a lot of those options.

My first name is my mother's mother's father's last (great-grandfather), and my middle name is my mother's mother's mother's (great-grandmother) maiden. Both of those names were lost in my generation due to lack of male offspring, so I got them. My full name is a little unusual and combersome as a result, but I like it, and I like the tie to my family that it represents.

My given name is the first part of my mother's maiden name, and my middle name is from a great-uncle. (both deceased before I was born)
My sister named her daughter after my middle name, but she spelled it wrong on her birth certificate. :rolleyes:

I think it's a Filipino tradition to have your mother's maiden name as your middle name. In my family, we were also given unique middle names so that our mother's maiden name is our second middle name. I guess we were lucky that our great grandfather changed his last name when he came to the US or we all would have had Protiniak as a second middle name, which doesn't flow too well with the rest of our names.

My mother also wanted us all to have something else to share in our names, so she gave both of my older sisters the same middle name, and my first name is a combination of their first names. My middle name is my mother's middle name as well. All three of the boys' names start with the same letter (as well as the name that was lined up for me in case I had been born a boy), but they got unique middle names for some reason.

Strange as it may be to others, and especially to "fremen", my middle name is FREEMAN. I am the 5th Freeman in a row, my two sons also carry the name...7 total as of now. Dates back to the end of the civil war.

my fathers name is Guiseppe (sp?) and my dad is Joe Jr.

My grandpa really really really wanted me to be Joe^3 but my dad thought that was too vain. sooo, he named me after his brother Steve. I love it.

My grandma, my mom and I all have the same middle name, Louise. I like that its not too common, especially when compared to my first name.

My parents should have gotten the hint that my name was going to be popular, when they first saw it on another baby in the hospital. Right at the names peak in popularity (and I think its STILL in the top 10 or 15, even twenty years later), my parents named me Ashley. :rolleyes:

My first name my parent must have smoked way to much dope becuse they both have diffrent stories on how they named me my middle name is my grandfathers name

This makes my head swim. When I was doing genealogy research, this tradition made things SO confusing. Anyhow, say there was a guy named Frederick. Frederick has 3 sons. So his 3rd son is named Frederick as well. Now if Frederick II has 3 sons, does that mean that he'd have 2 sons named "Frederick"? his first son (Frederick III, named after his grandfather) and his third son (Frederick IV, named after his dad)?

(wanders off vacantly...)

My first name is my Grandfather's first name

My middle name is my Father's first name...

The only trouble is, my first name would be great if I live in... say... the 1940's, but it's fairly rare to find anyone else with my name, especially another male from my generation...

Does that mean your name is NoSoup NoSandwich, or.....

If your last name is Forlunch, I'm just gonna kill myself.

Seriously now...that is interesting, somehow we managed to get all four grandparents names worked into our four childrens names. And still maintained the "Freeman".

From what I heard from my mother is that; my grandfater wanted her to name me Jose. But we already have like 400 Joses in our family. So he sugested Antoino, but there already are those in our family. they aparently argued a bunch of names, Juan, Jesus, Salvador, ect. My grandfater was such a influnce in the naming because my asshole dad left my mom before i was born. My grandfather wanted me to have a mexican name, and my mom was soo against it. So she, out of spite, named me Michael... I'm the only Mike in my whole family it's cool. She also gave me the middle name of Anthony (Grandfater's name), my gramps was quite happy.

pretty much yes....I ran into it many times in the research I've done, of course that was back when people actually adhered to that AND back when having 15 kids was a normal thing for a family

I was named after my great-grandfather. My first name was his first name, and my middle name was his last name. My dad's middle name is the same as mine, although he has his dad's middle name as his first name. Names tend to be recycled in my family, although we never have Jr. Sr., III, etc.

I am the 5th of 5, male. My first name is named for nobody. My middle name is that of my Grandfather.

That's all I got.

I was named after Sean Lennon.

My family has a very neat history of middle names. If it's a boy, he takes the father's middle name. If a girl, she takes the mother's.

Our family tree goes back to the early 1600's, and I love seeing almost all of the males with my middle name. :)

"i'm american baby, our names don't mean shit"

but seriously, i never knew that. my family tree which is chinese roots back all the way to the tan dynasty. we are the progeny of the emperor of the tan dynasty according to our family tree. anyways, for the chinese, our three-letter names only have one letter of creativity. The middle letters of our name (for men of the family only that is) are decided by a poem written by the earliest of our ancestors. Thus, if i meet another who has the last name of Lee, i can determine his "generation" (used to be really important in the chinese culture) for the last name lee is created in china during the tan dynasty by the emperor (there is actually a story about it.. i won't bother) so we Lees are all related in a sense. well, i went a bit off topic sorry---

I inherited the first letter of my paternal grandfather's first name.

QuickEDIT: Ugh, double post. Is there a way to delete this?

My first name is my dad's first name, but I'm not legally a Jr., and my middle name is the first name of a close friend of my dad's.

What kind of sucks is that my dad does not know who his biological father is, so the last name he took, and thus my last name, is the last name of his mother's one time husband and father of his siblings. I could try to follow the ancestry of my last name, but it is not really a biological link, it kind of sucks. I kind of wish that he took my grandma's maiden name or something, but back in the 50's things weren't the same as they are now.

My mother's middle name is the same as mine. It's from my Great Grandfather, Lee. I was given the name souly for the fact that my Great Grandpa and myself are born on the same day of the year.

That is like, the only significant thing in my family. I totally know that I'm naming my kid Lucius because I love that name. Screw tradition ;)

My first name is named after the Jazz singer :>

Middle name after my Mothers's Father.

My name mean's Champion

My name is Adam Douglas, and Douglas Adams was a famous writer.

Erm... my first sister was called Eve (Adam & Eve), but she died.

My middle name is my dads younger brother.

i was named after my dad's brother who died in a car accident 10 years to the day before i was born... my parents were planning on naming their first born son after him anyways... middle name is father's father.

my brother and sister don't fit into the scheme at all though, heh

my mother wanted to name me diane. she was under anesthetics when she gave birth, her sister told the hospital my name was to be (a different name), so that is the name i have. i have never felt connected to this name, even though i didn't know the diane story. i wonder who i would be if i was named diane. but i do have my mother's name as my middle name.

My first name(Andre) is just something my mother liked... My middle name(Taylor) is my great grandfathers last name(he had 5 daughters, no sons).

If I ever were to have kids I think I would give my middle name to him/her.

dam.....my wife's middle name is dottir, and I was puzzled with what it means, so it's "daugh-ter"