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 😂

Where have you got this from, my dad’s 7 siblings and my mums 3 were all WW2 young adults and were all called by their actual names !

I have an uncle who's known by his first name to friends and his middle name to family - this was because when he was a baby and Mum was a toddler, she couldn't pronounce "Christopher" and it got to "Tiffer". My grandparents didn't want that to stick and thought she would find Donald easier to pronounce. They didn't count on the song Donald Where's Your Troosers, or Donald Duck. When he started at a new school, some teacher introduced him to his new class as Chris, and he decided to roll with that.

Not Dave?

My granny’s sister was named Mary but known as Molly as their mother was Mary. That way it didn’t cause confusion.
My grandads sister was Mary Jane but she didn’t like that name so insisted that everyone call her May as her birthday was in May and she preferred it.
We also had a Jack in the family whose name was actually John.
My grandads mum was Margaret and he said his dad called her Meg.
Everyone else just seemed to have the usual diminutives of their names, Lizzie, Bill, Bob etc.

I was talking about this just yesterday, well an example of it rather than it being “a thing”. BIL’s sister, who is nearly 90, is called Jane but her real name is Wilhelmina!

Can't blame her really

I used to work with someone who'd been given a first name after some relative on her father's side, and then her parents split up when she was about four. Her mother immediately decided she wasn't having a name from her father's side used and refused to call her anything but her middle name after that.

My Granny used to wear a stick-on moustache, and my Uncle wore a dress. Their dog (a pug) had a false snout on a piece of elastic, and the local milkman walked with a limp even though he was 100% phyically fit (but mentally unstable).

I believe this, along with the the fake names, was to confuse the Nazis if they ever invaded.

Sadly their dog died when the gas mask they had fitted during the a particularly intense air raid of the docks in 1941 interferred with the false snout.

Strangely, my Uncle continued to wear his dress until long after rationing ceased in 1954.

Very common in Scotland to have your maiden name as a middle name (rather than a double barrelled surname)

My granny was born Helen but went my Ella!

I'd forgotten this one - there was confusion when some cousin was trying to draw up a family tree as to whether there were two siblings "Andrewina and Ada, Andrewina died in infancy" or "Andrewina became Ada through child wrong pronunciation of the name and that was only ever one person." Evidence in favour of the first is that there's no death record for Andrewina Lastname in the right area in the right time period. It was never really resolved as that cousin died without ever completing the tree.

My paternal great aunt and my maternal great aunt were each the "baby bunting" of their respective Victorian parents and known to all the family and friends as "Bunt" and "Bunty" respectively. Not something that happened much after the mid 20th century ( except we did have the Bunty comic in the 1950s/60s).

I'm Canadian, and I've observed something similar, OP.

In my parents and grandparents generation, many people seemed to have nicknames or use shortened forms.Mainly though not exclusively men. So things like Bobby, Billy, Dick. The nick names were sometimes common, like boys with the last name Miller were called Dusty, or sometimes applied to individuals, things like Boomer or Cubby.

The other thing I note is that this, particularly the nicknames, seemed more common in the working class.

It's unusual to see any of this in my generation (X) or those younger than me, though it's persisted to a greater degree in rural areas.

Yes on both sides I my great uncles and aunts. One side was very unusual with it though as they had names that were very much about nature around them.

Didn't happen at all.

If you're going back that far, most ancient societies thought names had power. If nobody knew your real name, no-one could curse it. Allusions to this belief crop up quite often in old fairy stories and ancient mythologies.

Was told lately (haven't verified with my own research) this can be traced back to the middle ages and their love of a rhyme. Margaret became Maggie, which Meggie which became Peggy for example. Same with William - Will - Bill, and loads of other examples.

The ones I'm still not sure on are the Henry - Harry, John - Jack sort of thing, but again those can be traced way back. Henry 8th was harry in his youth. I think it might be to do with translations. Ie Henry in french is Henri which could be misheard as Harry?!

None of my great grandparents went by their given first names and I've no idea why. Sadly they have all gone now but it was all totally random...James went by Nick for example

I may be wrong, but have an impression that people younger than me (I'm in my 70s) care much more about their names than my generation. My first name's unusual and I'm always being told I've got it wrong, am spelling it wrong, or it's pronounced differently .It can be mildly annoying but not worth a row, imo. I answer to anything that sounds like they meant me 😂 and just roll my eyes a bit while explaining that, yes, I do know my name. I've lived in countries where the language doesn't contain one of the sounds in my name, so have always let them adapt the pronunciation.

Most people on threads about name mispronunciation are really angry, upset about it and I don't rightly understand why - possibly something to do with 'identity', which seems to be quite a fragile thing these days? I don't know! I'm the same me whether you call me Joan, Jean, Jane, Jan or whatever. If it works as an identifier, it's serviceable.

Among my same-aged friends there's a Pidge, a Zippy, a Cat (not Catherine), a Sess (her name's Linda), a Vlad (woman), a Squidge, several Lulus whose names aren't Lulu, a Jake who just adopted the name at some point, dozens of made-up names that come from infant mispronunciations, a few Tinies and lots of nicknames derived from the bearers' surnames.

This must surely still happen? I've never heard anyone my age get worked up about being called the wrong name or nickname; at most there's a calm correction.

In the UK, you don't need a deed poll to change a name. As long as you can show you use "one name for all official purposes", you can just get on with it. I suspect this is changing with globalisation, as more systems require documented ID - but you could still have your passport issued as Squidge 🙂

I know a current day renaming of 'domestic staff'. A woman who worked for a large estate with a number of employees had the same name as the owner. She got renamed to 'avoid confusion' and it stuck so much it's now her name even though she stopped working for them years ago.

My paternal grandmother was Mabel. She was very difficult to find (died in the 60s) as her actual name was Esther. She went into service apparently and was told Esther was too posh for a servant so she became Mabel

Yes, my mum did this. Her full name was Forename, My Grandmother's Maiden Name (as middle name) Mum's Maiden Surname, Dad's Surname.

Yes that is very common, I am Scottish and we have a tradition of using surnames as first names - men called Campbell, Crawford etc, but also using previous generation surnames as middle names. This does make researching families easier if families do this. Although sometimes they go rogue, my grandfather had the middle name Smith and that is not a family name. Who knows.

What is not common is for women to keep their birth surname after marriage and use it as a middle name. Scotland has a long tradition of not "forgetting" women's birth surnames, both will be listed on a death certificate for example, and on old parish records you will see parents listed as John Smith and his wife Ann Brown, not Ann Smith.

I work with a lad whoes family cone from Jamaica and he says lots of his family have nicknames that bear no resemblance to their actual names.

All the older graves in our local cemeteries have the wives' maiden names on the headstones. I notice that the newer ones only seem to have the married surnames.

I've had my maiden name inscribed on my husband's stone: "Beloved Husband of Weary [Maiden Name]."