All the different family surnames

My DS has my surname and we gave my partner then DH's name as his middle name telling. him he was free to change it if he wanted later. He didn't, DiL wanted to take his name, so I have plenty of my name going on down: tho it rather depends on DGC.
But my now ex partner has brothers with children in his name so it didnt disappear.

It was the 1980's but I couldn't bear to lose my name nor when I re-married later. It just felt weird.

It still goes on. I worked at DVLA. Those of you who drive will have a number that is the first 5 of your surname, your DOB in code an your first 2 initials. There is then a tie breaker of 9 to 2, then a-y leaving out I and O, so if yours is 9 you are unique. However, it took just 35 minutes for the first J Smith born on 2 dates in 1952 to run out of tie breakers, when we loaded the data in. And within 3 days there were many multiples.
Then the fun one of unpicking driving offences between James and John, twin sons of John born on his 30th birthday! (It wasn't me m'lud, 'twas 'im)

My one great alternative was buying a leasehold property ( the names of the original lessees are included - one Miss Aurania, Aolia, Evangelina Smith - her parents had imagination

Aveline

I had great difficulty trying to trace my family tree. So many had the same surnames on both sides and everyone seemed to be called John or Margaret. I gave up. We're just too boring!

A random discussion with another Hansell (on a completely different subject and connection) elicited the fact that she lived just a few miles from my cousin, although they both arrived there from totally different sources.
Further, that she did not think we were related as her family came from Norwich and mine to London via Shropshire. However, when I got back 4 generations lo and behold, we WERE from Norwich. Sadly though, I could not pin down which of the six Johns were my ancestor, all born around the same time in neighbouring parishes!

Mattsmum2

I’m getting married again this year and when we saw the registrar we had to give the names of our parents and their occupations for the marriage certificate. My husband to be couldn’t remember his fathers middle name. It turns out when we checked he didn’t have one. His mother now deceased had the same first name of Mary as her sister. She used her middle name as her preferred name. Why would you give two children in the same family the same first name! They were a highly religious family.

We’ve given notice to marry. You don’t have to give your parents’ names. I did, OH hasn’t.

Macaydia

Birth certificate always have parents names. It doesnt ask if they're married. I believe marriage is a religious tradition.

I do notice women these days are less likely to change their name with the argument they are not property or just for professional career reasons.

Birth certificates don't always have parents names, both parents have to be present when the birth is registered to have their names on it. My 3 children have no father named on their birth certificates because he refused to go with me to register them.

I heard that the local unstuffy aristocracy confused the village school because the parents used their titled name (earl and countess of ... ) the elder son his courtesy title (viscount ... ) and the other children the family surname.

i had to use two names at school depending on who i was staying with, if it was my mum then it was my step dads name and if my gran then my real dads name, some teachers would make a joke about it saying things like....so what name are we using now?

My great grandfather (Thomas) had sons called Thomas and Edward then married again long after his wife died. They had two more sons called Thomas and Edward.

missdeke

If two double barreled people produced children would they then end up with quadruple barreled names. Things could get out of hand ...

They'll do like the Spanish, who've had lots of double barrelled surnames for yonks. My son knows the rules, but basically you take one from the Mum's name and one from the Dad's name to make the double-barrelled name for the children.

My mum had a double barrelled name as she was adopted. My birth grandmother died when my mother was age 2 so she took her real parents surname name and her adopted parents surname.

missdeke

If two double barreled people produced children would they then end up with quadruple barreled names. Things could get out of hand ...

Remember Lady Jane Antonia Frances Vane-Tempest-Stewart?
Fancy writing that in your school books!

I think she married and became Lady Jane Rayne, after she was widowed she married Robert Lacey (the biographer).

If two double barreled people produced children would they then end up with quadruple barreled names. Things could get out of hand ...

I found it relatively easy tracing ancestry both maternal and paternal family historybecause they are not common surnames. When you try to trace some very highly used surnames its very hard, the further you go back you realise how small the gene pool was.
Cannot see the point of a double barrel surname, how far do you take that, if it was a name I wanted my child to have it would be another Christian name. You can choose not to change your name on marriage then what surname would your child have? I was happy for my children to have my husbands surname although we subsequently divorced. I dread to think of the amount of children who were raised by non biological children without knowing so in reality its more reliabl taking the mothers.

MarieEllathere may be a backstory to children having double barrelled names there certainly is in my grandchildren having two surnames Its not been done for fashion or anything else

Children given the same name sometines happened when the first child died and a subsequent sibling was born.

I suppose they used both names for eg Mary Jane & Mary Rose, which has become common again now, although hyphenated to make sure everyone knows to use both.

I’m getting married again this year and when we saw the registrar we had to give the names of our parents and their occupations for the marriage certificate. My husband to be couldn’t remember his fathers middle name. It turns out when we checked he didn’t have one. His mother now deceased had the same first name of Mary as her sister. She used her middle name as her preferred name. Why would you give two children in the same family the same first name! They were a highly religious family.

Macaydia

Birth certificate always have parents names. It doesnt ask if they're married. I believe marriage is a religious tradition.

I do notice women these days are less likely to change their name with the argument they are not property or just for professional career reasons.

Marriage is not just a religious imposition and is universal deep into prehistory. Many animals and birds form lifelong pair bonds

The pupose of marriage/pairbonding was to enable the male contribuor to the formation of a child to be reasonably sure that he was actually the father, of the child he was acknowledging as his. In animals, where there is no pair bonding the male usually plays no part in the nurture of the animal.

Ceremonies to publicly acknowledge that an exclusive pair bond had taken place wer to enable people to know who was still in the pair bnding pool and who was not.

Now, of course we have DNA analysis, but this was only possible once someones genes could be analysed and I seem to remember that the use of DNA analysis for matching human DNA has only been possible since the 1990s.

I have the same problem as paddyanne when it comes to my Irish ancestry. Once they arrive in this country, between 1800 - 1850, it isn't too bad but before then.

There is also the problem of illegitimacy, we do not know who the father of one of my grandfather's was, because he was born illegitimate and his birth certificate only includes his mother's name.

Sorry if I hijacked the post!!!

I often wish I had kept my pre marriage name . A few years ago a long lost friend tried to contact me , she had no idea whether I had married or not - I had.
She found me by knowing I had a brother and sought him out. He contacted me with her address. Without having a brother we probably would not have been reunited!
One thing that really irritates me is a close family member ( on my husbands side) addresses my birthday cards as
Mrs P. .......... My first name does not begin with P!!!! Its quite enough adopting my DHs surname- I dont want his first name too!!! Drives me mad, I am not an add on to my DH I am ME and have my own first name.
It so old fashioned, unnecessary and infuriating.

My father had an unusual surname and his family had lived in the same area for hundreds of years. Tracing that family tree was easy because the church records were excellent.
It’s so much worse if the church records are patchy, the surname is common and everybody was called the same few names. Which John Smith is this? The father or uncle or son? Some families used the same names for more than one child and some were still having children when their older ones were also having children.
It’s a fascinating and addictive interest.

Macaydia

Birth certificate always have parents names. It doesnt ask if they're married. I believe marriage is a religious tradition.

I do notice women these days are less likely to change their name with the argument they are not property or just for professional career reasons.

Is that the case now?

I had difficulty finding out who my great grandfather was because his name was not on my grandmother's birth certificate, although my grandmother had what seemed to be a surname as one of her middle names. Unfortunately, it was and is such a common name it was difficult to find out much about him. Although Banns of Marriage were called, he never married my great-grandmother.
Did he die? Did he scarper?

I have a very common surname and tracing ancestors and needed the parish records or census to trace them even the 2 or more families of the same name. Christian names run in families lots of John, Richard, Robert and Charles in mine.

My paternal grandfather's name is Maltese, it was the one I grew up with and so often mispronounced. Going back on that line, lots of Italian surnames, some hailed from Sicily I believe. My grandfather's birth certificate is in Italian. My mother's maiden name is French, my maternal grandfather's people came from Alsace and I've only found out a couple of years ago that they were Jewish, sadly after my mother died, she would have loved to have known that. She thought at one time they might have been Huguenot, because there was no evidence that they were catholic. My grandfather, my mother told me, never went to church with them, my grandmother's family being Irish and therefor catholic. Other than that the names were pretty standard, even the Irish side of the family didn't have particularly stand out out Irish names, until I got back a couple of generations, although I do know they originally came from Limerick.

Going back into 19th century records for England, it was interesting to see how often a child would be given the mother's maiden name as a first name, a way to keep the mother's family name going, it puzzled me at first to find these strange first names, but I think it was a fairly common practice.

I have one branch of the family that came from North Devon and their church records went way back. I've been to many places where there are family graves, Kent, North Devon and around Great Malvern, where my paternal grandmother's line originated.

I love genealogy it's been an enduring interest for the past 20 or so years, although like everyone I've come up against brick walls. Thank God for cousins, even ones I didn't know I had, they've given me so much information over the years. All those dead people would probably have had ten pink fits if they knew how much future generations would be poking around in their past sometimes digging up things they'd have rather kept hidden