You've heard of double-barrelled surnames, maybe you've even heard of triple-barrelled surnames (hello, Ralph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes) but have you ever heard of a quintuple-barrelled surname?

Behold the Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville family... and their coat of arms, not so much quartered (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartering_(heraldry)) as sliced and diced and finely minced.
#names #surnames #heraldry #history

Fuller Names: Names that do more

You’ve heard of full names but let me introduce you to even fuller names.

In Iain M. Banks‘s Culture novels, names act as an address if the person concerned stays where they were brought up [ref]. This got me thinking about the roles of names in the age of The Internet. There is a lot of pressure on parents (well some parents) to give their children unique names these days. Mostly this results in some questionable name choices. Add to that the push for a unique personal brand, chosen handles, nicknames, deadnames, and all the other naming stuff. This left me wondering if Mr Banks might not have had a good idea we can use.

For fun, I thought I would see if I could work out a structure for a naming system that could be a unique route/reference to a single person. That got me thinking of other fiction that does interesting or cool things with names and titles.

I’m going to start with a list of name things that could be used:

• Given name (or new name) [Legal Name]
• Family name (surname) [Family]
• Nickname and/or handle(s) [Handle]
• Title(s) (Mr, Mrs, Mx, Ms, Lord, HRH etc.) [Title]
• Chosen name [Known As]
• Location [Address Parts]
• Birthplace [Birthplace]
• Career or profession [Profession]
• Parents [Father] [Mother]
• Employer [Employer]
• Pronouns
• Notable activities [Activities]
• DNS/Profile [Lookup Request Service]
• Letters after name [LAN]
• Esquire (perhaps)

The basics

The first few should be relatively obvious, For example, you might refer to me as Mr Matthew David “Lord Matt” Brown. That’s the first four – all common name and title things.

Then we get to known as. I tend to go by Matt.

Address parts

Address parts are the section of naming inspired by Iain M. Banks. I suppose that the address section could have many parts the use of which could be optional because not all of us want to doxx ourselves. In this imaginary world, the full address part of the name is used for official stuff (like opening a line of credit, utility billing, voter registration, etc.

Culture names act as an address if the person concerned stays where they were brought up. Let’s take an example; Balveda, from Consider Phlebas. Her full name is Juboal-Rabaroansa Perosteck Alseyn Balveda dam T’seif. The first part tells you she was born/brought up on Rabaroan Plate, in the Juboal stellar system (where there is only one Orbital in a system, the first part of a name will often be the name of the Orbital rather than the star); Perosteck is her given name (almost invariably the choice of one’s mother), Alseyn is her chosen name (people usually choose their names in their teens, and sometimes have a succession through their lives; an alseyn is a graceful but fierce avian raptor common to many Orbitals in the region which includes the Juboal system); Balveda is her family name (usually one’s mother’s family name) and T’seif is the house/estate she was raised within. The ‘sa’ affix on the first part of her name would translate into ‘er’ in English (we might all start our names with ‘Sun-Earther’, in English, if we were to adopt the same nomenclature), and the ‘dam’ part is similar to the German ‘von’. Of course, not everyone follows this naming-system, but most do, and the Culture tries to ensure that star and Orbital names are unique, to avoid confusion.

Names, A FEW NOTES ON THE CULTURE by Iain M Banks

Using Banks’s system we would all acquire Sun-Earther as part of our location name or Sol-3 perhaps. I took inspiration from history for birthplace and differed from Banks slightly. See Birthplace for more of my ideas there. I justify differing in that (1) there is no reason not to riff on the idea and (2) “not everyone follows this naming-system” so we are still canonical if we too differ.

One fun idea might be to play with postcodes. Most countries have them. Many that have postcodes (zip codes in the US) have letters in them. For those with letters, one could substitute words for each letter.

For example, my postcode area is CT9. So I could choose to render that at Character Transcriber as a reference to both TTRPGs and my writing.

For brevity (acknowledging the irony here), it would probably be traditional to include the minimum needed lines to find you. On top of that, it might be optional just how much you include.

For example, you live at 237 Madeup Street, Somecounty, Smalltown, AB1 2CD. You might choose to render that as Madeup Smalltown A Brilliant (1/2) Cool Dude. Or you may choose to forego the address most of the time.

Birthplace

This one is a nod back to the invention of surnames. My reference here is Leonardo da Vinci whose name means Leonardo from Venice. Thus, part of your name could be “de [Birthplace]”.

Career or profession

This is another nod back to the invention of surnames. Many surnames trace their origin to professions. Names like Smith, Brown, Baker, Tailor, etc..

As a bonus this part of your fuller name answers the two most common questions, “Who are you?” and “What do you do?”.

Parents

Another early surname thing but also something nerdy and sci-fi. #

Surnames such as Johnson, Matthewson, Babson, and so forth first came about to define a person by who a parent was.

No for the sci-fi bit. In Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, we meet the Nietzscheans who carry the names of their parents. This takes the form of [Name] from [Father] out of [Mother]. You can add that to your fuller name.

I guess you could also add professions for your parents too.

That would make mine by John the artist out of Rosemary the teacher

Employer

For Employer as part of your name, we look to Max Barry’s book Jennifer Government. In Barry’s setting people take their employer as their surname. Guess who Jennifer works for…

As we are not a dystopia, perhaps a fuller name might hyphenate the employer with the family name. For me, that would be Brown-Self (as I do not work for a company).

Esquire

Esquire is sometimes used as a general courtesy title for any man in a formal setting, with no precise significance, usually as a suffix to his name, and commonly with initials only. Chuck an “Esq.” in if you want. After your location name part seems to feel about right to me.

Pronouns

This is where I got a bit creative. Rather than list the pronouns, we can demonstrate them.

Take both [Profession] and [Kown As] (chosen name) we can make:

[she|he|they|…] [are|is|…] the [Profession] call [her|him|them|…] [Known As]

For me, this would be “he is an Author call him Matt”

Activities

This is a section where you can bulk out your name with things you do that are integral to your identity. I might choose “gamer, geek, coder, writer, chair of Thanet Creative”

DNS: Lookup Request Service

DNS stands for Domain Name Service it is what helps your computer turn authorbuzz.co.uk into a unique network address so the page can load. Perhaps you don’t want to give out your address and phone number but you might want to enable people to request those details. Your Lookup Request Service is where people can go for more information. Like, for example, your online profile. Like my about me address https://me.lordmatt.co.uk/.

Letters after name

We already have a system of letters after names like BSc, PhD, MD, DLitt etc.. They are called Post-Nominal Letters if you were wondering. They still go at the end.

The Oxford University Calendar style guide lists diplomas and certificates after degrees so I’m claiming HNDip [ref].

Putting the fuller name all together.

We are left with a pattern for fuller names that looks like this:

[Title] [Legal Name] [Handle[ AKA [Handle]…]] [Family]-[Employer] da [Birthplace] by [Father] out of [Mother]; [|she|he|they|…] [|are|is|…] the [Profession] [called|call [her|him|them|…]] [Known As] the [Activities] in [Address Parts] referencing [Lookup Request Service] [LAN]

For me, I am unfussed about my pronouns which can easily be inferred so I skipped some of the pronoun formations for better “flow”. For the same reason, I added a semi-colon after parents to disambiguate transitions.

I am the one and only Mr. Matthew David “Lord Matt” Brown-Self da Ramsgate Esq. by John the Artist out of Rosemary the Teacher; the Author called Matt the gamer, geek, coder, writer, and chair of Thanet Creative in Sol-3 Kent Character Transcriber 9 referencing me.lordmatt.co.uk HNDip

What’s your fuller name?

#Surnames

once, when asked about the origin of my surname…
me : not sure - might be sanskrit
them : funny, you don't look sanskrit #sanskrit #surnames #NotFromRoundHere

It’s maddening to encounter the uneducated attitude that men in the USA can’t have #hyphenated #surnames. My husband & I have shared the #legal surname O’Moore-Klopf for 31 years now. Catch up with the times, people!

Check out the surname dictionaries, even the mammoth Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, and you’ll find Curnow classed as a locative name, a form of Kernow, the Cornish for Cornwall and a surname presumably given to a Cornishman. But this simple and apparently clearcut explanation may not be the right one.

First, why would someone be named in the Cornish language as a Cornishman when they lived among other folk, virtually all of whom would also have been Cornish? It doesn’t seem to be a very effective discriminator.

Second, the historical pattern of the forerunners of the name looks curious. The modern distribution of the surname, concentrated on the west, is misleading. The spelling Curnow began to appear from the 1580s, at first on the Lizard. Before that time the name was usually Cornow or sometimes in the east of Cornwall Cornew. Significantly, in the early 1500s it was found scattered across the land and was not confined to the Cornish-speaking districts, a surprising distribution given its supposed emergence among Cornish-speakers.

Even Robert Morton Nance, the father of the Cornish linguistic revival, had his doubts, describing the origin of Curnow as ‘less clear’ than might be thought. He suggested a Cornish language nickname from the Cornish corn, meaning horn, although that would hardly explain the presence of the name in east Cornwall in the 1500s.

Curnow comes in as equal number 68 in our list of the most frequent surnames in Cornwall in 1861. Here’s the rest down to number 69. You can check out the early maps of these here.

Further details of most of these names can also be found in my The Surnames of Cornwall.

The costs of maintaining this website are constantly rising. If you’ve enjoyed it then making a small donation would help to keep it ad-free.

https://bernarddeacon.com/2024/10/08/curnow-kernow-when-the-obvious-meaning-may-not-be-so/

#Curnow #familyHistory #surnames

Another ten surnames will take us to 50, actually 51 as there is a tie for 50th place. The list is still dominated by surnames derived from given or first names. This is similar to Wales and a symptom of the relatively late adoption of surnames in mid and west Cornwall when compared with England (and with east Cornwall).

Uren is a rare example of a first name from Celtic roots rather than the more usual Norman-French.

Maps of all these surnames in the 1500s and 1641 can be found here.

Further details of most will be found in my The Surnames of Cornwall.

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https://bernarddeacon.com/2024/09/24/cornwalls-50-commonest-surnames/

#familyHistory #surnames

The ten surnames below ranked 31st to 40th in the list of the most common surnames in Cornwall in 1861, just before the peak of emigration (and a century before mass immigration began).

We’re now beginning to meet more variation in the type of surname we’re encountering, with the first occupational names and nicknames making their appearance.

Meanwhile, Tonkin, originally Tomkin and a pet name for Tom, seems to have been a particularly popular choice in Cornwall’s Cornish-speaking districts.

Maps of all these surnames in the 1500s and 1641 can be found here.

Further details of most will be found in my The Surnames of Cornwall.

https://bernarddeacon.com/2024/09/17/ten-more-surnames/

#familyHistory #surnames

We’ve seen a list of the 20 or so commonest surnames in the nineteenth century. But what about the others? Over the next few months when I have time I’ll post the top 200 names (combining spelling variants as far as possible) in batches of ten, with their supposed type and the number of households with that name in 1861.

To recap, here’s the amended top 20.

And here’s the next ten.

Finally, we meet some names that didn’t arise from a first name. Cock for example was originally a nickname with various suggested meanings. It was widespread in Cornwall by the 1500s and the broad similarity of its distribution in the 1520s and the 1640s implies that it was already a fixed surname in most places in 1500.

Maps of all these surnames in the 1500s and 1641 can be found here.

Further details of most will be found in my The Surnames of Cornwall.

https://bernarddeacon.com/2024/09/11/cornwalls-top-surnames-the-list-continues/

#familyHistory #surnames

Everyone in Japan could have the same surname by 2531 due to unique law | indy100
https://www.indy100.com/news/japan-same-surname-sato-2531

#Japan
#Surnames

Honoré de #Balzac
Immanuel #Kant
Charles #Dickens

Important #figures for #me #Bonus they have funny #surnames xD

@GraveyardSnoop in my genealogy classes people are often surprised to learn that consistent spelling of surnames is fairly recent. 16c documents can have 4 or more spellings of the same surname on one parchment. #surnames #genealogy @genealogy

In my second #OnePlaceStudies10 blog post for @SocOnePlaceStudies published on #OnePlaceWednesday, I reveal my list of the Top Ten Surnames of my Waters Upton #OnePlaceStudy!

https://www.one-place-studies.org/the-top-ten-surnames-of-waters-upton/

#FamilyHistory #LocalHistory #OnePlaceStudies #Surnames #WatersUpton #Shropshire

Interested in the #surnames of people in your #OnePlaceStudy / #FamilyHistory, and finding out where those surnames are/were most prevalent? Here are three resources shared by Debbie Kennett and IGRS (the Irish #Genealogical Research Society) on Twitter:

Worldnames (current data from 198 countries): https://apps.cdrc.ac.uk/worldnames/index.php

GBNames (uses historic censuses and recent consumer registers): https://apps.cdrc.ac.uk/gbnames/

Irish Surname Maps for the 1901 & 1911 Census of Ireland: https://www.barrygriffin.com/surname-maps/irish/

@AtcherleyONS

I ended up with a similar #SurnameStudy for one of the names in my #FamilyTree: Freligh (Froelich/Freleigh/Fraleigh/etc).

I began with an existing compiled printed #genealogy, but I've found a lot more than what's there, over the years. I've even discovered an error in the printed genealogy.

https://diggingintoyourfamilytree.wordpress.com/2023/02/17/freligh-genealogy-including-addendum/

I also created a #timeline to organize all the various surname matches I found which were the same first name as my ancestors. (There were a lot of John, Henry, William, & George Frelighs in early 1800s America, apparently.)

I highly recommend making #timelines when researching genealogy. It was by doing so that I caught the error in the original document. It also explained WHY my ancestors made various life decisions (such as moving to different cities & changing jobs), when I put their life events right next to historical events.

https://diggingintoyourfamilytree.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/freligh-timeline_updated-2020.pdf

#Genealogist #Geneadons #FamilyResearch #FamilyTrees #Surnames #FamilyHistory #SurnameStudies

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Jezebel: Sex. Celebrity. Politics. With Teeth: Jenny Lewis Touts Her Life As a Single, Child-Free 'Peter Pan Figure' in Her 40s https://jezebel.com/jenny-lewis-touts-her-life-as-a-single-child-free-pete-1850506429 #Jezebel #americanpeopleofgermandescent #antifrackingmovement #cancersurvivors #robertdeniro #jennylewis #peterpan #surnames #surname #actors #lewis

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#introduction I joined Mastodon yesterday and am learning how to use it. I live in Massachusetts north of Boston. Some of the family names I research include Salt, Denman, Boothby, Snow, Sweet, Coffin, Hockman, and Minor #surnames My roots are mostly New England but my Salt line came to Virginia first. All of my great grandparent lines migrated to Ohio, so I do a lot of Ohio research.

Many years ago, I chanced upon a printed Genealogy of the Freligh family, written by Genealogist Theodore “Ted” Overbagh.

At the time, I had no evidence that my #Freligh lines met up with the ones in his Genealogy, so I contacted the author to see if he had any further information. He then sent me his “Addendum” to that document. From the second document, I was able to connect my Freligh lines to his substantial compiled #Genealogy.

[This article is intended to be a resource for Genealogists researching the Freligh surname and associated surnames, such as Fraleigh and Froelich. Additional resources for researching this surname and the Palatine Emigrants (aka “Pennsylvania Dutch”) are listed at the end of this article.]

#Genealogydons #FamilyTree #Ancestry #Surnames #Genealgists #Geneadons #SurnameStudy #SurnameStudies #Surname

https://diggingintoyourfamilytree.wordpress.com/2023/02/17/freligh-genealogy-including-addendum/

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