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 😂

Exactly. In Ireland, with small rural communities and a small naming pool with lots of shared surnames, individuals often would be identified by their own first name and their father’s and their grandfather’s eg Peadar Sheáin Mhìcil (Peadar, son of Seán, son of Micheál). It even shows up on some official documents like Griffith’s Valuatuon to distinguish between numerous people with the same first name and surname from the area.

Just like having Alice B and Alice T in a class.

My grandad registered my auntie with his choice of name rather than what had been agreed. My grandma just called her the original choice anyway!

Was there a smaller pool of names really?

I am talking 1900, not post-war. There is an often quoted statistic that in Victorian Britain, 16% of people were either John or Mary.

When you are researching families you are practically jumping for joy when you come across an Ambrose, Leopold, Augusta or Drusilla in among the sea of John, Mary, Janet, William.

What I have learned after years of researching this sort of stuff is that families do weird shit.

It never ceases to baffle me why families automatically give everybody the same first name, and then suddenly realise that they effectively haven't given the child a name at all - the basic purpose of a name being a way of distinguishing you from the other people in your family, where there will probably also be one/a few surname(s) that everybody shares.

If every boy is John and every girl is Margaret, you may just as well have called them all 'Boy' or 'Girl' - and then it becomes quickly apparent that they do need an actual name that's unique (within the family) in order to differentiate them from the other members.

About 30 years ago, I met a delightful elderly lady whom, I learned, was actually named Alison, but everybody had always called her 'Twinnie' since birth, as she was one of twins, so that was what she always went by. As well as being very unimaginative, It did rather beg the obvious question of what the other twin was always referred to, but I was too polite to ask!

My G.G. Grandmother was called Maryann (various spellings exist - she couldn't write.) Wasn't until after years of research that I met an elderly relative at a funeral who grew up in the same street that I learned that she was known as Polly!

Because they were accustomed to a world with a lot of identically-named people and the identifying factor being via nickname?

I mean, I don’t think most of us now, if we lost a child, would give the same name to a subsequent child, but it was pretty common practice until not that long who.

My grandmother was known by the name that apparently was her older brother’s choice of name for her rather than her what her parents actually named her.
The other thing I don’t quite understand is diminutives that don’t quite make sense (even though I know they’re accepted diminutives), why does Margaret become Peggy or what’s the point of making 1 syllable, 4 letters of John into 1 syllable and 4 letters of Jack?

I too find this fascinating. My Edwardian grandmother was Hilda Mary, but everyone called her Jane. She hated ‘Hilda’, and claimed that Jane was her middle name. It wasn’t.

Where I live, there is a substantial elderly population and many, perhaps even most, are known by their middle names rather than their first names (I know this because my voluntary job involves some name related admin). No one seems to know why, it’s just the tradition or the convention as a hangover from Edwardian or pre-war times I guess..

This is so true - so many mums wanting to give their child a perfectly reasonable name that they love, but NOT actually wanting to officially give them that name, as they don't think it's grand or 'proper' enough!!

"Does 'Jack' work as an everyday nickname for Ptolomy-Polonius?"

My mother is Irish and came from a family of 12 children. 3 of the 5 girls had the name Mary (albeit one as only a middle name). Alternative names were a necessity.

Good points... but I wonder where that sprang from? Considering that, back then, it would be automatic for women to take their DH's surname, then all the children would have the same surname; so surely that was the unifying factor within families?

Maybe there were social 'customs' that we're no longer aware of - whereby you had to give your child one of a very few 'approved' names or be shunned and ridiculed - and calling your child an ordinary name, but not one that was ordinary/in longtime usage for your particular family, was heavily frowned on? Maybe even something like William was considered the equivalent of 'chavvy' if his dad, uncles and grandad were all called John?

It's an interesting one about the custom of recycling names for future babies after losing them, as in our day, I think most people would consider that diminishing the memory of the original one. Very different if you name your new baby after her much-loved DGM who recently died after a long, productive life. Maybe they just did the whole 'honouring' thing but in the same generation?

I remember somebody on an old MN thread who knew of a family of 5 young men - and all of them were given Mary as their confirmation name!

That's very similar for Tanni Grey-Thompson. When she was born, her (toddler) older sister tried to refer to the new baby as 'tiny' but couldn't quite pronounce it properly, so she became 'Tanni' - although her actual birth name was Carys!

There's also a woman who has appeared on countless TV gameshows who goes by the name 'Pooey' - and I gather that came from similar origins. I suppose it's helped her along, though, as when producers are looking for distinctive characteristics, quirks and funny stories amongst thousands of contestants applying to go on the show and hoping to win big, the heavy lifting has already been done for them!

But there were also lots of the same surname — that’s my point. If there are five John Smiths in the same small village, they need distinguishing in some way. I mean, that’s how surnames originally evolved. John (the) Smith was distinguished from John (the) Carter, and big John Long from dark-haired John Black etc,

People were simply far less focused on naming their children as any kind of exercise in originality. Many just used family names already in circulation, and often the first several children were named after the grandparents, anyway, so any kind of ‘free’ choice would come quite far down the line. I mean, this isn’t centuries ago! My siblings and I were born between 1972 and 1982 and my sister is named after my mother, both first and middle name, and my brother has the same name as my dad and his dad, who lived with us, so a lot of people with the same names lived in our house at the same time. Only after the first three children did my parents start using non-family names.

Both my maternal grandparents had different names to their birth names. No idea about my paternal grandparents.

My father was born in 1920 and he was always known by his middle name by everyone, ever since he was a young boy. People were often surprised when they saw his initials written down.

I think his actual first name was given because he had an uncle called that, but presumably that wasn't what his parents really wanted to call him!

I am pretty sure that all / most of his brothers were known by middle names too. No idea whether this was for the same reason. None of them left alive now to ask obviously

My gran (born in the 1910s) was called Sarah, but always went with her middle name, Maud! Apparently everyone but family knew my aunt by her middle name rather than her first name, and my mum has gone by a completely random nickname given to her by colleagues since the age of about 17!

At least 4 generations on my Dad's side the eldest sons had the same first and middle name. They alternated between using middle and first names. Second sons also had the same name as each other. So my dad's uncle and brother had the same name: one used a shortened version. And when you got to cousins same pattern.

you definitely did have people named after celebrities etc in the time period you are talking about, look at the explosion of girls named 'Victoria' etc when before her the name wasn't known in the UK. While not celebrities exactly there are also things like people being named 'Jubilee' around the time of the, well, Jubilee etc.

Obviously it wasn't to the same scale as is done now but was a 'thing.'

Still waiting for the 'everyone in the second world war had fake names' bullshitter poster to come back with evidence for that!

My granny was one of more than a dozen born between 1905 and 1930 as far as I am aware they're all known by their given names or common diminutives. But my mum did have about 6 Aunty Mary's and Uncle John's because serval uncles married Marys and several aunts married John's so they were all referred to in the family by slightly odd identifiers like Mary one eye (she had both eyes but a one eyed cat) John blue door (painted the house door a very vivid blue) Mary next door (an uncle married the girl next door). Until you get it into your head who everyone is it's completely surreal, especially as the John or Mary often get dropped so it's just Aunty one eye or Uncle next door.

Same here. I always thought my mum was Maggie as that's what my dad and her parents and siblings called her. It was a bit of a shock to find out she was actually called Iris. Likewise, my maternal Grandmother was called Mary to her family and my Grandad. I only found out when researching the family tree that her real name was Elizabeth. The girls in my family going back generations (my sister and I included) weren't given middle names; only the boys!

My grandfather (born 1895) was Herbert, always known as Bertie. Apparently his friends called him Tim. I have no idea why.

The other grandfather and both grandmothers were always known by their proper names.

There was someone in the wider family of that generation whose real name I don’t remember but it might have been something like Victoria Elizabeth so she was always known as Queenie.

Everyone ?

The vast majority of people in WW2 were not given fake names. Anyone who has even dabbled in family history or watched a single episode of who do you think you are knows that.

SOME intelligence officers (spies) would use a fake name just as they do nowadays. And there is some evidence that people in the Army with Germanic sounding surnames would change them to more English sounding surnames. But the idea that everyone got a new name is just nonsense.