Genealogy Chat

has any one any knowledge on the use of surnames as middle ames. in my family tree i hae the hubbards ,southeys ad stone who areall related bymarriag at some point severall of these members especially the southeys have used the name russell as a middle name. i have found out yhat the stone line was related through marriage to the russell family. they all came from Dover.none of the others have had their surnames used in this way. i dont really have much info on stone line or russells yet .can any one enlighten me on them or this subject please. noneof these are the females maiden name.
many thanks Elaine

thank you jonesey for your reply, i can understand that being the case with the southey and stones but less so with the hubbards as it was a neices grandfathers father in laws wife who was the russell .so why would they want to incorperate the name in theirs, unless somewhere in the hubbard family they are related in a closer way that i have no knowledge of yet. also could any one tell me what sort of people in the 1800s could afford headstones of at least 3 , with at least 3 members buried in the graves.
yhe son-in law in with the mother in-law and the wife in the grave in the ajoining plot?
many thanks

Hi Elaine
I have found a whole family of siblings with the same middle name . They did however originate from Scotland.
In my family the children became Austin Williamson but the unusual thing was their mothers maiden name was Williamson - but even then they weren't consistent.
Joan

many people would save up for years to be able to put a gravestone on, eg, their parents' grave, or their spouse's grave


Once the gravestone was pruchased and in place, having another name engraved on it for a later burial was relatively cheap.


There used to be a marble and stone yard close to every cemetery, and there you could order the type of gravestone/memorial that you wanted. And there would also be a stone engraver working there.


Of coruse, you also had to buy the plot in a cemetery ........... not sure what happened in a church yard.



sylvia

Elaine, going back to your Hubbard/Russell query, here's a couple of suggestions.

1) Perhaps the family expected to inherit from a Russell and used the name.

2) Perhaps the connection is closer than you think. Cousins married cousins, etc, so that there was a stronger connection.

Ozi

Just a reminder that you can search at FreeBMD for first name(s)=**Russell to find any instance of a middle name of Russell appearing in the GRO index.

You can also use Hugh Wallis's IGI Middle Name indexes at:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/

In my mothers family her brother had their mothers maiden name as his middle name and previous to that her younger sister and brother had their mothers maiden name as their middle name and their christian names were those of their grandparents

We have an example in my wife's family where all six children were given their mother's maiden name as their second christian name.

The reason for this is that No 1 child was conceived out of wedlock when her father was on leave during WW1 in 1816. Despite his considerable efforts (he tried to wangle a sick leave by breaking his arm) he wasn't allowed to return home for the birth and had to wait until the war was over.

It was 1920 before they were able to marry, but not before mother was 6 months pregnant with No 2 child!

thank you all for your input it has given me food for thought. and I shall endeavour to find out more,and yes as for christian names a lot of them have been handed down through the families. my dad had a middle name and then a third but it was his christian name and third name that were handed down there is, as of yet no other family member with his third name.and so far his three half sisterswere not given any christian names handed down ,and only the eldest had russell as a middle name.

It's still quite common to do it in the North East of Scotland.

at one time, children were given the name of a godparent


.......... in the hope that that would encourage said godparent to give great help to godchild! That could be in the form of inheritance, or help in finding a job, or other advancement in the world.



Some children might still have been given a godparent's name.




sylvia

Hello Elaine Another thought for you....

My Mum and her siblings all have my Grandads birth surname as a middle name. The girls just have his surname Dowsett as their middle name i.e. Lily Dowsett xxxx but the boys have both a 'normal' christian name AND the name Dowsett as a middle name i.e. John Albert Dowsett xxxxx Its not hyphenated with their surname.

It appears my grandad changed his surname prior to WW1 but my Nan was unaware of this until after they married in 1915. When the children all came along we think she believed that if they all had grandads birth surname as part of their name they wouldn't be seen as illegitimate!!!

thank you and sylvia thats very interesting never thought about that.
myself and my two brothers were given middle names none of which are from my dad or mums side. they were just names they liked, unfortunately we dont .my mother is was Scottish and none of her relatives that I know of have middle names at all.
thank you everyone

Hi Elaine,
I have quite a few ancestors who have a 1st and 2nd name of NEWTON so just lately I have been researching to find out where the name came from....it was from a female's maiden name ....also I have an ancestor called Anne Elizabeth Preston XXXXXXXX , I don't know where Preston is from as it was not from her mother's maiden name....

I am told by a local church that churchyard plots were free.You just had to show some connection with the church (and that could be quite remote) and you could be buried there.

Lots of my ancestors used surnames as middle names, or even first names, it crops up in several families. My uncle inherited his middle name from his gfather, no-one knew where it came from, until I had a breakthrough and found it was the surname of HIS gmother. That opened up a huge new section of tree. And as the names still crop up now and then, it's easy to identify rellies who have it.
OH's family also use this custom in 1 line, MIL reckons it is a Scottish custom as they were originally Scottish, and some of mine are too, but not all.