Registering baby with one name but using another

[Chowtime]

Can anyone explain the reason behind the generational (people now approx 70 and older) thing whereby parents used to register their children with one name but call them by another?

I worked in care homes for years and noticed it was very prevalent then - someone called Ann all her life whose registered name was Margaret for example.

Obviously their parents weren't alive to ask them about this but I wondered if anyone else here knows the reasoning behind this.

Thanks.

There are a few examples of this in my family. Some of it is just like having a shortened everyday name now, others it's more like a nickname.

Maybe there was more expectation of having a 'proper' name rather than a shortened or nickname on your birth certificate? Babies and children now often seem to be given names that would once have been the shortened form.

Lots of reasons, could be because there was more than one person in the family with that name or in their class at school. Could be a diminutive from childhood because a sibling couldn’t pronounce their name. Could be that they go not by their first name but another of their middle names. I’m Welsh and going by your middle name is quite common here, lots of people I know IRL don’t even know my first name.

My nan was called a different name all her life and she said it was when she went to school their were 5 girls with the same name. For 2 of the girls they used their middle names, and 2 the initial of surname but my nans middle name was the same as her older sister and one of the other girls middle name, So my nan had a totally different name. Even her family called her it

Agreed. My parents and grandparents would never christen a child Milly or Maisie or Jim, they would be Amelia or whatever and called Milly. Now people don't use the long form at all. That said, my mum hated short form names, she was christened Elsie and has no middle name. She always felt she was hard done by so we hall have names that are hard to shorten as well as middle names.
Sometimes in a family there were too many people called John or whatever so my dad was called by a version of his middle name.

My aunt was Margaret Ann, but always known by her middle name of Ann! Margaret was a family name, passed on through generations, and they thought Ann Margaret didn’t sound “right”. There was also the expectation that a child had a “proper” name, so Sally would be registered as Sarah, Annie as Anne or Hannah. That sort of thing. They wold have thought it very wrong to register a Maggie, Betty, Charlie etc.

For my Irish Catholic grandmother it was a case of being given a saint's name, but so was everyone else (normally Anne, Mary or Bernadette!) so nicknames sprung up.

There was less choice of names years ago so lots of people shared names. I have a diminutive as a first name and wish my parents had christened me with the full name.

My grandad was always known by his middle name. I think it was just more common back then.

She was Eliza for a few weeks
when she was a baby –
Eliza Lily. Soon it changed to Lil.
Later she was Miss Steward in the baker’s shop
And then ‘my love’, ‘my darling’, Mother.
Widowed at thirty, she went back to work
As Mrs Hand. Her daughter grew up,
Married and gave birth.
Now she was Nanna. ‘Everybody
Calls me Nanna,’ she would say to visitors.
And so they did – friends, tradesmen, the doctor.
In the geriatric ward
They used the patients’ Christian names.
‘Lil,’ we said, ‘or Nanna,’
But it wasn’t in her file
And for those last bewildered weeks
She was Eliza once again

Can't edit this, it's by Wendy Cope

Sometimes children would be named after grandparents and as families were generally bigger there would be lots of cousins given the same name.

As above. And you had to have a "Sunday best" proper name so Catherine instead of Cath, Cathy, Kate, Katie etc.

My mum and all her siblings are like this. No one uses their actual legal name!

I worked in a bank for years and it caused so much stress for people as cheques were made out to wrong names'. People
Would get really angry that we couldn't pay cheques in that were made out to different names.

In my dads family it was that all the men had the same name given to them as first or middle depending on how it flowed, but would then have either name or a diminuitive used depending on who was still alive and around.
My mums family seemed to acquire names totally unrelated to their given name which they then used all their life, but also did naming for people where the 'inherited' name was never used even if it was listed as their first

@Sharptonguedwoman that poem is quite sad.
My grandad was known by a nickname his whole life and when he went into a home they called him that too.

Oh sorry, shall I take it down?

I believe it was quite common amongst Catholic families to give the child a saint's name as a first name, and then another name as a middle name which is what would be used day to day.

My mum is in her 70s and goes by her middle name as she was named after her mum so it meant there was no confusion.

i find it all very odd as her middle name is actually nicer than her first name.

The bizarrest one is a guy I know who is known as Ian but his name is actually John!

@Sharptonguedwoman no don't delete it.
It's both sad and beautiful in a way 🙂

I think it was quite common for eldest son/daughter to have the name if the parent but be known as something else such as second name or nickname.

My uncle is 76, has a very out there first name, uses his middle name because it's much more "normal"

I think it's in the book Lark Rise to Candleford that has a bit about how childrens names were always shortened (William - Billy, Elizabeth - Lizzy etc) so one child was named May because no one can shorten it and she'll always be called by her proper name.
She ends up being known as Mayie 🙂

My parents go by their middle names. It was a Catholic thing were the done thing was to christen children by a saints name

DH was called by his second name till he was 15 and then refused to answer to anything but his given name. Young friends of ours have just had a baby and she has two very old fashioned, posh sounding names but they also announced another name as the name she is to be know by. I can’t even remember what her given name is.

My dad and nearly all his cousins had the same first name and are/were known by their middle names. Why, heaven knows, as it doesn't seem to be a common name further back in their family.

I think my grandfather registered my mother's birth. My grandmother hated the first name he chose so mum was always known by her middle name (which was much nicer) by everyone from virtually day one, except as the poem says when admitted to hospital and we had to keep correcting them and in death.