How did the tradition of middle names start? What are naming traditions in other lands?

Answer 1

Some of the answers are close. The actual answer is that there were two different ways that they developed and it depends on which country you're talking about in getting the answer.

In countries that used to use the "patrynomic" system of identifying people it was hard to break the habit of using the father's name in identifying the child. So the patrynome was added to the first name and continued on as an extension of the first name after surnames were in place. That's why you can research a Dutchman and find records of Hans Jacob van Mullekom from Noord Brabant and know that Hans was the son of Jacob and it was an easy way to keep records straight. It's also why so many Frenchmen have hyphenated first names AND a middle name...more on that next.

The second way they developed was in Catholic families. The tradition was to give the child a patron saint at his/her baptism and registering the child by their first name and their patron saint's name. That gives us "Jean-Luc" and "Marie-Genevieve" in French speaking countries...only "Jean" and "Marie" were their patron saints and "Luc" and "Genevieve" were their "common names". In religious records they were still known by their patron saints' names first and their common names second. In civil records they dropped their patron saints' names and just used their common names.

In other Catholic countries the order was reversed. That's why we have Spaniards with several middle names...they were given several patron saints. And it's why Italians dropped the hyphenation altogether for a few centuries and just "smushed" the names together, such as Michaelangelo. Over time the Church standardized the naming traditions so priests were the ones who actually separated the two names and gave some consistency from one country to another. Prior to the Reformation, Europe was predominantly Roman Catholic. We Orthodox were in the East. So the tradition was standardized in the West, but the Orthodox did not share the tradition in Greece, the Balkans, Asia, etc. Hence, middle names are an outgrowth of Catholicism and the standardization of old practices into one new one.

Answer 2

I will answer this question for US mainstream only, make an attempt to guess at long-ago mindsets. After going on 150 - 200 years of following prescribed naming patterns it must have been confusing for them too, or perhaps it was a social rebellion! It's an all new nation, why not break with (or at least bend) some other old world traditions too.

We began seeing assorted babies given honorific names by about 1800, for instance George Washington Smith and Marquis (Marcus) LaFayette Jones, babies named for the preacher or the doc or midwife who attended the birth, along with names I think the parents just happened to like. So instead of a small community with 35 John Smiths, we began to see middle names too in the mix to help sort out whose is which.

Answer 3

Not sure about the middle name thing, but in Ireland there is a tradition of identifying a person by teh dominant parent's first name, rather then their surname. For example, someone called michael, with a father called Colm, would be called Michael Cholm (means Colm's Michael). THe great thing about this is that if Michael had a son called paul, he would be known as Paul Mhichael Cholm and so on. I used to know a guy called Andy Andrew Phat Sheain Andrew.

Answer 4

There was no law ordering this but in the Philippines the common practice is to use your mother's surname as your middle name.

I can say it started with the Spanish way of using the maternal name as the third name after the father's surname: Jose Garcia (y) Lopez. Then the Americans came using middle names and initials (John F. Kennedy) and somehow the Filipinos just found a way of combining these foreign practices: Jose Lopez Garcia, to Jose L. Garcia.

Answer 5

In Taiwan, the Republic of China, the Chinsese give their children their surname (always placed first), a first name and a middle name. To approximate into English, I knew one man whose name was Chen Ke Lieun. As far as I could ascertain, their custom goes back 5,000 years.

Answer 6

i dont know anything about the middle names. but i think in either ireland or some other country with a name similar to it the last name relates to the profession of the person. for example, a man who works on roofs would be named "Decker," which means "Roofer." a smith would be, u guessed it, a "Smith."

Answer 7

In most eastern european countries the middle name is given to you after your father
So if your father is Boris
then your middle name would be Borisovich("ovich" - being the ending)
If it's Yuri than it is Yurievich
so it's either ends with ovich or evich as far as I know
whilst in Middle Eastern countries the middle name would be "bin" which means son of and then you get bin Mohammad bin Ali bin etc. )))