AIBU to wonder about names in the past.

[Wiseplumnet]

AIBU to ask if anyone has noticed this, and if they do, what the reason for it is. I am in my 60's, so my grandparents were all born in the 'Edwardian' era and not one of them were called by their actual names. Some of them were so different from their given names, not diminutives like Dottie for Dorothy but more like Nora for Gladys! Names bearing no relation to first or even middle names. My Grandfather was called James John but every called him 'Bertie'. I have come across this in other families too. I thought I would ask a bigger group ( ie mumsnet) to see if anyone else has noticed or pondered this. I think I got too much time on my hands 😂

Everyone was given fake names in the Second World War for security purposes. Most of them stuck.

Definitely the case in my family tree. I have a Queenie (Sarah), Jimma (Frederick), Pearl (Bette), Alma (Emily), Queen (Rose) and Jack (Edmund).

Lots did use their actual names or an acknowledged diminutive, but we only discovered some of their real names recently despite being very close to them as was my Mum!

I’ve heard of this happening but my grandparents and great parents all use their actual names. The only thing is our surname was anglicised thanks to fearing Nazis so that has changed.

Pretty sure that's not true, what's your source for that?

my partner's grandad is called Mike and they call him teddy.

I deal with families in the past all the time for my job. There are several things going on here.

First, in the past people used a much smaller pool of names and you can read about that here: https://one-name.org/modern-british-surnames/statistics/forenames/mens-names/ - one stand out is that around 1900, 72% of men had a "top 10" name - John, William, George, Thomas etc. So you have a society where there are a LOT of people all called John, Mary, Jane, George, and often with common surnames too. You have to differentiate between them. Many used middle names or nicknames. Nancy for Ann, Peggy/Meg for Margaret, Kate/Kath for Catherine etc. And others just went totally off-piste with nicknames for whatever reason. Part of the reason for this is that certain parts of the country had specific naming traditions - first son named after father's father, second son named after mother's father etc and this kept the pool of names small. Fashion in names wasn't a thing, you did not have many parents naming their children after "celebrities" as that concept didn't exist in the same way. Middle names were not commonly given in ordinary families (i.e nearly all of us) until the middle of the 19th century, before that you were probably just John or Mary.

Complete nonsense.

I just asked my great grandad Quaardvark about this and he said he'd never heard of it 😐

This is also true, the 1850-1915 period saw lots of immigration into Britain from Ireland and continental Europe, it was very common for non-English speaking immigrants to try to fit in by changing their names. Most unusual example of that was a Lithuanian miner I was researching who arrived in the UK as Jaffim something or other difficult to pronounce, and left as John Smith. No paperwork of course - you could call yourself whatever you wanted and it didn't matter like it does now. No passports, birth certificates, bank accounts. And that's before you get into the whole Jewish naming conventions where one person may have a Hebrew, Yiddish and English name.

My great grandmother (a young adult in the Edwardian era) was called Ruby, but when she died everyone found out her actual name was Lilly. I´ve always found this weird.

My grandma used a diminutive of her middle name.

I reckon if MN was around in the 1910s you'd have mums posting "I have to call my first DS after my DH's father Albert but I hate the name, so WIBU using Albert on the birth certificate and just always calling him Freddie?"

My mum’s side is a bit posh and the names are bonkers. We have Olwyn and Pud… I only see them at funerals but learned this year that Pud’s name is Julian (he’s in his 90s and I’m 40s). Trying to do the family tree with mum last year had us in stitches as she tried to remember their actual names over the names they were known by.

my grandad was Charles but known by John at work (his middle name). No clue why.

Ahaha that made me laugh 👏🤣

I’m a nurse and have wondered this. So many elderly people have a different name that they go by. I have asked quite a few of them why their name is different to their medical notes and most of the time they don’t know themselves. They just say that that’s what their mum called them.

Middle names were sometimes used I think when the family tradition was to give a much used ‘family name’ as a first name. But the second name was the one they used as they liked it.

my grandad was Charles but known by John at work (his middle name). No clue why.

FIL is like this. His name is (for example) Arthur William Smith. He has always, since childhood, been known as Billy or Bill. I asked why, it's because there were several other Arthurs in the family and they wanted to be sure what Arthur Smith they were talking about. Why they didn't call him William Arthur is a whole other story.

It's usually not a problem for him but he was in hospital recently and when he was at his most unwell, out of it and confused, he had no idea that the staff were talking to him as they were calling him Arthur and not Bill.

Had this on both sides of the family. On the Welsh side people would be christened with an English name but known as the Welsh version e.g. Laura/Lowri and Jane/Sian. Occasionally they would go by a random Welsh name like Ioan instead of William/Gwilym.

On the English side my Dad's Aunts and Uncles almost all seemed to go by random other names like Daisy (but pronounced Day-gee) instead of Sarah. Or nicknames like Pop instead of Charlotte. I think it was because of the smaller pool of names used in those days.

Errr no they weren’t. My grandfather fought in the war and neither he nor anyone else in the family changed their names.

Its normal to use the diminutives that are common at the time for the era or geographical location.

I did have a relative who gave all of the children in the family random names (think Bill for someone called Roger)!

Oh and I just remembered that my grandmother, called Vera (because of the Russian emigres escaping the bolshevics) was always known as Puss. I asked her why when I was a young teen and it seems when she was born she "had one eye open and one shut" and there was some well known now long forgotten character who was like this. All her sisters called her this and she even used to sign letters and cards to them with this nickname.

For various different reasons, practically everyone in my extended family is known by their middle name or a shortening of their middle name or a totally unrelated name.

As PP said, there wasn't the need to prove your identity with paperwork in the past, so people just changed their names when they fancied it. One of my great-aunts disliked her given name so just started using a completely new one when she was 19. So her birth certificate says Gladys but her marriage certificate etc says Ava. That sort of thing makes tracing family histories really hard.

My grandmother lived until the age of 65 before seeing her birth certificate. It says Ruby but she'd been called Miriam her whole life. So she'd got a passport, jobs, a pension etc all in the name Miriam, totally oblivious that it wasn't her real name. She was a bit surprised to say the least.

I love the nickname trend of the upper classes of the late 19th-early 20th century, as read in PG Wodehouse books eg 'Catsmeat' 😆

My dad’s eldest brother born 1935, was called John but known to everyone but his wife as Graham. My auntie born 1947 ish was Barbara but known as Mavis. My 1914-15 grandparents were always known by their actual names.

Was there a smaller pool of names really? People often had scores of relatives and would sometimes use family names. I remember back when you had baby name books and they were extensive.

Every generation has naming conventions of its own. Just like it seems like many girls are now double barrelled with Mae or Grace or whatever, it seems like every UK GenX girl has Louise or Jane as a middle name and back in the day they used the diminutives that have largely fallen out of fashion.

Both my grandmother and great aunt used their middle names, no idea why.