'Twas Ever Thus

Here is an interesting — if slightly snarky — article from 1871. It covers many subjects in naming, from the use of surnames-as-firstnames to multiple appellations. 

As the original piece was very long, I have not include the first half of the article which briefly discusses the surnames used by Dickens. 

 

NAMES    In the use of Christian names there is often much absurdity. A man's sirename is Smith, as good a name as exists, since it probably shows descent from the man who forged ploughshare or sword. Well, he condescends to lower affinities, and christens his boys Howard and Clinton, though he has not the remotest connection with the great houses of Norfolk and Newcastle. This, we hold, is a mistake. To use a family name praenominally is justifiable and wise; to use the name of some other praenominally is silly, and cannot be justified.  The way in which sirenames change their form and lose their significance was curiously indicated in a colloquy we had with a farmer of our acquaintance, named Esdras Dearlove. We asked him if he knew the meaning of his name. He thought at once of the Esdras, and said "it was something out of the Apocrypha." But when we assured him that the apparently sentimental name Dearlove was compounded of deor, a wild animal, and hlaf, a hill, and that his forefathers were probably rabbit warreners, he was perfectly delighted and has had a higher opinion of himself ever since. Names get corrupt, and their history is left uninvestigated. The man born to be called Simper does not know that he is really a Saint Pierre. Death is D'Aeth, and Diaper is D'Ypres. Mr. Filbert, when he takes his port, does not guess that some remote Teuton ancestor of his was viel brecht—very illustrious. Nor does Mr. Halfpenny, disgusted with so coppery a name, imagine that he has a perfect right to go back to the Norman origin of his folk, and call himself D'Aubigny. When making notes on names there are two or three points worth mentioning. One is the curious habit that our early English forefathers had of never using a Scripture name. Their names always had meaning; Æthelred is "noble counsel;" Godgifu (the Godiva of Tennyson) is "the gift of God." And here comes a second note—that in early English, A, the first letter of the alphabet, is invariably a masculine termination. We, with our absurd Marias and Jemimas and Matildas, are apt to be puzzled by Ina and Hylla and Offa of a thousand years ago. And now a line or two on later nomenclature. Double, treble, quadruple, Christian names are now the fashion; but the first Englishman that ever bore two Christian names was Henry Algernon, fifth Earl of Northumberland, born 1477, and it is probable that he was not so christened, but took the nickname Algernon (which means "having a moustache") from his ancestor in the days of William Rufus. Queen Mary called her godsons Anthony-Maria, Edward-Maria, and so forth; and Camden says "I only remember now His Majesty, who was named Charles James, and the Prince his sonne, Henry Frederic; and among private men, Thomas Maria Wingfield and Sir Thomas Posthumus Hobby." Also, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, born in 1621, says in his autobiography, "I was christened by the name of Anthony Ashley." Between 1571 and 1625 there were 2,222 students admitted to the Inner Temple, and there was not a double name among them. But the Court set the fashion. In 1738, George III was baptised George William Frederic. In 1761, Oliver Goldsmith, in the "Vicar of Wakefield," ridiculed the growing folly by introducing that charming and elegant person, Caroline Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs. In 1781, the custom must have grown decided, for a Wiltshire register contains the entry, "Charles Caractacus Ostorius Maximilian Gustavus Adolphus, son of Charles Stone, tailor." After which, the deluge.                                              The Graphic                                     (London), 28 October 1871

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