Why do people double barrel first names?

Satan-Grace!

Three together is just unrealistic. Who's actually going to use them all? She'll just get called Ella, by everyone, forever.

'Council' is such a horrible way to describe anything.

Sarah-Grace obviously!!

It's a nice way to use a really popular name but make it different like Satan-grace or Clara-rose or whatever. I like it.

“I hated it. It sounded so , council, for lack of a better word.

Well you sound so, up your own arse and snobby

I don't like it. It's always the same second names and and it's always to make a perfectly nice name even more flowery/babyish/girly.
Rose, may, grace, Marie etc.

Flawless not so much why, but here’s the best bit...

My mum told me the second part was suggested by my dad, which in turn was his ex’s name 🙈 my mum always sounded secretly fuming but I don’t know why she agreed to it either.

Yeah, they aren’t all there!

(They don’t know about my name change)

If I see a child with a double barrelled first name I always assume parents are lower class. I know this is judgmental but it indicates a group to me in the same way I’d assume Mohammad’s parents were Muslim.

Giving your children a double barrel with the second name shared is awful. Sounds like you couldn’t be bothered to come up with a whole name just for them.

My child goes to school with a child who has a triple barreled first name, it looks like the parents couldn't chose between two double barreled names so threw them together. So instead of chosing Ella-May or Ella-Rose theyve just chose Ella-May-Rose (not childs real name)

I also remember if the school was caught calling me by one half of my double barrelled name my dad would get really angry. He would correct anyone. I found it awkward and embarrassing

Isn't it common in France?

Jean-Luc
Jean-Pierre
Anne-Marie

It's not a new thing.

Anne-Marie, Lisa Marie, Sarah-Jane, John Paul etc. all very popular in the past.

I have a Lily Rose. No hyphen. It's because we wanted Lily but it clashed with our surname as a standalone name. So she's called Lily 99% of the time, but when her name is read or said aloud in full, she's Lily Rose L, which sounds much better.

I know an Ava-Grace and a Lily-Anne. Why ffs???

I have a double barrelled first name. It's German.

I don't care for it but it is actually a proper name. Like Marie-Claire is.

I don't care for random double barrelling much but each to their own.

It's cumbersome, a faff and I don't like it. But each to their own - I doubt everyone like the names my kids have! (And I don't care! And I fully expect people who hyphenate know full well that it's not received well by most people and they don't care either.)

Even a total of four syllables split into two never flows as well as a four-syllable name.
Ella-Louise is cumbersome. Elizabeth is lovely.
Anna-Beth is cumbersome, even though it's shorted than Elizabeth.
I've never seen a double-barrelled British name that feels comfortable, to my ears.
Somehow it does sound ok when the French do it!

Of the people I know who have done it,
One - picked both grandmothers' names and mushed them together (Bizarrely, it could have worked much better as one name that was already a name - like Annabelle, but they called her Belle-Anna)
Two - Wanted to be unique (probably isn't though, the second name is one of those ubiquitous -Mae -Lily -Rose type fillers)
Three - parents couldn't decide and couldn't compromise. Though I always think that the parent who got their choice placed first is the winner!

The vast majority are girls, but I do know four boys with double-barrelled names. One gets shortened to his initials, they call him OJ, or 'Ohhjjj'!

I think it depends on whether the names 'go' together. Daisy-May sounds far less clumsy than Harriet-Poppy, for example.
Please don't do it if your surname is also hyphenated, though!

@MrsHathaway I didn't realise it was a catholic tradition-not catholic ourselves and have never had that assumption from others (husband and children are not the right ethnicity for people to assume Catholicism) but children may find it nice if they choose to convert. I think the whole 'council' thing is only used by people from that end of the socio-economic spectrum. I've never heard it in real life and I don't think that dotcotton meant any harm as she was referring to herself.

well there is for example the Welsh name Valmai but its pronounced my not may

I knew a nice woman and her equally canny dsis, they had 6 dc each and all had double names!! Used to blow my mind hearing them at the shops!! Terry-Lee was one lad, Tony - Paul another. And one set of siblings had double barrelled surnames -

don’t think

Just to mention I don’t Mai is a misspelling - isn’t it possibly the Welsh or Irish version?!

My name would be much easier to pronounce if it was hyphenatted.

I've heard Abigail-Kimberly. Seems so pointless as she's never going to be called that fully on real life, it might as well just be a middle name.