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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 21 Mar 2008 07:57 pm |
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I listed a couple of books for sale on trademe the other night. They were:
1812, by Antony Scott-James
and
The Russian Empire 1801-1917, by Hugh Seton-Watson
Both were written in the 1960s, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that with the explosion in use of these hyphenated names - sometimes called "double-barrelled" names - we are long overdue for a crisis.
I refer, of course, to what happens when the children in these hyphenated relationships start to marry and have children of their own.
I mean, when Basil Scott-James, son of Antony, marries Hyacinth Seton-Watson, daughter of Hugh, will they christen their children Cyril, Dolores and Mulgrave Scott-James-Seton-Watson?
Or will they revert to the sensible and millenias-old tradition of choosing a surname - a single name - for their offspring?
I think we should be told.
PS: I also note that, presumably because of the hilarity it caused in urban areas and outside the United States, Americans seem to have abandoned the practice of christening their eldest sons Jackson P Winemiller VIII, or XII, or whatever number they were up to in the dynasty.
Which only goes to show that, in time, everyone comes to their senses. I think.
I was looking for a photograph of the egregious Benson-Pope person with which to illustrate this note, thinking that he was precisely the kind of person one would expect to find in the midst of this fascinating dilemma, but I seem to have deleted my extensive library of photographs of him, expecting never to have to refer to him again. This photograph, which captures something of the essence of the dispenser of tennis balls, will have to do meantime.
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 21 Mar 2008 09:18 pm |
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Since writing this piece I have found that, as is invariably the case, someone has gone before me.
Apparently a singer named Lou Nathanson has written a song entitled "Tom O'Malley-Finkel-Harris-Smith" which makes fun of this phenomenon, asking:
What will happen when all the people with hyphenated last names start having grandchildren?
An entry in Wikipedia under the heading "Double-barreled names" includes this section, under the quaint subheading "Upper-class families" (you may feel with me that the subheading "Idiots" would be more appropriate):
A few upper-class families (e.g. Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe; Cave-Browne-Cave; Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound; Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby; Vane-Tempest-Stewart) have "triple-barrelled" surnames (created when one spouse has a double-barrelled name and the other has a single surname). Nowadays, such names are almost always abbreviated in everyday use to a simple or double-barrelled version. There are even a few "quadruple-barrelled" surnames (e.g. Montagu-Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, Stirling-Home-Drummond-Moray; Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax) and the surname of the extinct family of the Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos was the quintuple-barrelled Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville. Captain Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache is sometimes quoted as the man with the most ever "barrels" in his surname (six), but in fact all but the last two of these (Tollemache-Tollemache) were forenames. Because of this avoidance of common surnames, and because many upper class families have double-barrelled surnames, it is often assumed that double-barrelled names indicate a certain pretentiousness or snobbishness on the part of the bearer. As noted above, however, double-barrelled names may be adopted for a number of quite different reasons.
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 14 May 2008 12:10 am |
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I am about to list some books on trademe by another person with a double-barrelled name: Debbie Mayo-Smith, a lady with very big hair (what my brother calls "bedroom hair").
It occurs to me that if Debbie had married someone named "Naise" instead of Mr Smith she could have called herself Debbie Mayo-Naise.
That is all.
You may go on with your sensible lives now.
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