[ANSTHRLD] Name check please

[tmcd at panix.com]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 francis.schalles at ttuhsc.edu
<heralds at ansteorra.org> wrote:
> My Lady informs me that she understood that a person might be given
> a middle name at birth, and upon being baptized receive her mothers
> name as well.

The culture and time period are critical.  I dimly recall: she's
late-period Irish, right?  Even that's not specific, since there's two
major cultures at that point, the Anglo-Irish around the Pale and the
Gaelic-type Irish outside.  If she's interested in being authentic for
a culture/time, which is it?

Middle names were pretty rare in *English*, even in late period;
E. G. Withycombe indicates that it didn't become fashionable until
Queen Henrietta Maria (wife of Charles I, I think, 1620s and on).  The
text I sent before indicates that in some languages it was strictly
impossible: Irish Gaelic and Arabic in particular I remember.  In
Italian, French, and other languages, it came in in the last couple of
centuries of our period.

I have never heard of a general custom of giving a child a father's
given name and/or mother's given name.  There was a custom of giving
the child the name of a *godparent*, but that was having the child's
given name be the given name (or, in late late period, the surname) of
the godparent, not adopting two names (one of them the godparent's) --
again, until after period in England.  WIthycombe writes a bit about
that.

One pattern used in almost all languages (before inherited last names)
was to be "<given name> son/daughter of <father's name>" -- but that
was used as a LAST name.

So for a name of someone in Ireland, certainly "<given name>
<surname>" is fine.  As I understand it, "<given name1> <given name2>
<surname>" would be registerable in an Englished context of an
Anglo-Irish name in the Pale, but would have been quite unusual in
period.

Daniel de Lincolino
-- 
"Me, I love the USA; I never miss an episode." -- Paul "Fruitbat" Sleigh
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tmcd at panix.com