What’s in a Name?

Last/Family Names

In genealogy research, one often is reliant on consistency (at least relative consistency) in last (family) names. In many current cultures, there is a patronymic naming convention, i.e. the last name of the father in the family is the one that’s passed down from generation to generation (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronymic). In current US culture, when two individuals get married, the wife typically takes the last name of her new husband (which is why tracing back through the female side of the family is a bit harder). And the children are given the same last name when they are born. But if you are tracing your family back far enough, you will reach the point where this convention was adopted in a particular country/culture and before which there may not have been traditional family names. Thus William the Conqueror had that name to distinguish him from others named William.

This is not a “law”, although it may have been in some countries in the past, but is a convention. And recently we see more individuals preferring to keep their “born as” last name, so instead of Mary Smith changing her name to Mary Brown when she marries William Brown, she keeps the name of Mary Smith. This also applies to children, who may sometimes now be given the name of Samuel Smith-Brown (not unlike what the Spanish culture has been doing all along). It’s also entirely legal for Mary or even William to change their last name to Smith-Brown, Brown-Smith or any other name of their choosing. But the patronymic convention is still the predominant one.

There are, of course, exceptions to this patronymic naming convention. In most Asian cultures, females keep their name when they marry, although children are still given the family name of the father. And Icelandic culture passes along names through the first name of the father (although sometimes the first name of the mother), the children of Jon Einarsson getting the last name of Jonsson (Jon’s son) or Jonsdottir (Jon’s dottir) depending on the gender of the child. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name)

First/Middle Names

But this blog is not about family names, as interesting as they may also be, but about the choosing of first/middle names (or what are sometimes called the “given name” as it is the name that is given to a child).

The three-name structure used today began in the Middle Ages when Europeans were torn between giving their child a saint’s name or a common family name. The practice of giving three names eventually resolved the problem with a formula: given name first, baptismal name second, surname third. However, over the centuries this formula has become less common, with families now often just using middle names as yet another expression of that person’s given name (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_name and http://mentalfloss.com/article/58440/why-do-we-have-middle-names), although it may still be used for things like maiden names (such as Hillary Rodham Clinton) or other uses.

There are several aspects of first/middle names that bear some discussion. These include family/historical significance, gender aspects, common/popular names, and current trends. I’d like to address these aspects individually before discussing my own name as an example.

I’m also going to primarily confine this discussion to recent US culture, as that the one that I have the most familiarity with, but I will insert a few examples from other cultures.

Family/Historic Significance

Sometimes, names are chosen because (a) they are ones that are commonly used in that family’s history, e.g. the first son is given the same first name as the father, (b) the parents want to honor a particular relative, e.g. great-uncle David passed away recently so a newborn is given the name David in his memory, or (c) there is a particular combination of first/last name that just seems to go together.

In looking back over my Russell ancestry, and ignoring the last several generations where this convention seemed to fall into disuse, there are nine instance of Robert Russell, six instances of John Russell, and three instances of Thomas Russell. So out of 24 generations between the origin of the family name 1000 years ago until 1780, all but six of my 24 great grandfathers had just one of three different first names. I’m not sure which of the above reasons were predominant, but there was obviously not much originality.

In more recent years, the Russell family has used the middle name as the way to pass along this heritage, but I’ll discuss that below.

Gender Aspects

You may not have thought about this, but for many names there is a pattern that distinguishes male/masculine names from female/feminine ones. Look at the following list where I have listed a male name, the common nickname(s) associated with this name, and the corresponding female name.

-          Alan (Al), Alana

-          Robert (Rob/Bob), Roberta

-          Donald (Don), Donna

-          Charles (Chuck), Charlotte

-          Frederick (Fred), Frederica

-          Michael (Mike), Michelle

-          Edward/Edwin (Ed), Edwina

-          Paul, Paulette/Paula/Pauline

-          Christopher (Chris), Christine/Christina (Tina)

-          Joseph (Joe), Josephine

-          Louis (Lou), Louise

-          Stephen (Steve), Stephanie (Steph)

Note some common features here. First, nearly all the male names end in a consonant where the female names end in a vowel. Secondly, if the male name is not already a single syllable, there is a nickname that is only one syllable, but the female equivalents do not generally have such a nickname.

Consonant/Vowel endings originated in Latin/Greek culture a few millennia ago. Latin male nouns ended in “us” and female nouns ended in “a”. Thus there were names such as “Paulus” and “Paula”, both of which meant “little” or “humble” (see http://www.behindthename.com/name/paul and http://www.behindthename.com/name/paula). This consonant/vowel ending convention has carried forward to today, although we have generally dropped the “-us” from the male version of the name. The vowel ending of the female version is similarly no longer just “-a” but can be things like “-ette”, or “-ine” as well.

In recent US culture there has been a practice of men wanting to have a short, usually single-syllable nickname – one that has a certain “maleness” about it. That’s the case with all the above examples, but people have often done so with other names – such as my uncle whose given name was “Clarence” but whose nickname was “Zeke”. Females, on the other hand, often wanted a more “flowery” name, so the longer multi-syllabic version of their name was preferred. Individuals who had shorter names, such as “Mary”, would often instead use both their first and middle names (e.g. “Mary Ann” or “Mary Louise”) to make their name longer.

Common/Popular Names

For this topic I’m going to use http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=&sw=both&exact=false as a reference site. There are other sites like this to help you explore names, but this has several features that will help illustrate my points.

First, look at the graph before entering any names/genders. In order to normalize for the different population across the various census years, all figures are given relative to a population of 1MM. In this particular graph, the names of the top 1000 names (by count) in each census year are ordered alphabetically from top to bottom. Each stripe has one name associated with it (blue for boys, pink for girls) as well as the relative rank within that gender. So on the left hand side, the widest blue stripe (near the middle) is for John who has rank 1 (among boys) in the 1880’s. Similarly, the widest pink stripe is for Mary who has rank 1 (among girls) in the 1880’s. If you hover over any stripe it will tell you the name and rank for that name.

There are two conclusions I draw from this chart. One, the width of each stripe changes over time. For example, the width of Mary’s stripe gets progressively narrower as the years go by, and nearly disappears by 1990. So the popularity of names changes over time.

Two, these are the most popular 1000 names, but the sum of the widths does not ever reach the 1MM line as the remaining less popular names are not shown. But look at the top of the striped area. The total of the top 1000 names is above the 900,000 line, and even above 950,000 until the 1960’s. Then it starts a downward slope so that by the end of the graph the most popular 1000 names only account for 75% of the total. So while historically many people used a fairly limited number of names (like John and Mary), there are an increasing number of less-common names being used today. I’ll say more on this below under current trends.

Now, let’s examine the trends for some example names. Just enter the name in the box on the top of the graph.

John – in the 1880s there were about 40,000 babies given the name John out of every 1MM births, nearly 4% of the population. This has trended steadily downward until today when it’s less than .4% of the population.

Mary – started trending downward, then a large revival in the 1910-1930 timeframe before trending downward even steeper, going from 33,000/million to fewer than 1000. The revival in 1910 was because of the ascension to the throne of King George V of England and his wife who became Queen Mary. This popularized the name for a time, but when George died in 1936 and Mary was no longer queen, it fell out of popularity (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_of_Teck).

Vernon – (my father’s name), peaked in the 1920’s when he was born, then began a steep decline until it has essentially disappeared today.

Alan – (my name), peaked in the 1940’s when I was born, has declined since then but still about 1/3 as popular these days. Matched in popularity these days by Alana, Alanna, and Alannah, three female derivatives. Allen was equally popular in the 1940’s, but has declined ever farther than Alan. Allan also peaked at the same time. Another variation, Allyn, briefly appeared in the 1940s in the top 1000, but then disappeared again the following decade.

Kimberly – (my daughter), first appeared in the 1940s, peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, then fell off again.

X – (this gives all names starting with that letter), non-existent in the early years, but becoming more popular in the last few decades, with Xavier now ranked in the top 100 and Ximena growing quickly in the last 15 years.

This is a fun tool – play around with your name of your family members’ names.

Current Trends

As noted previously, there is now a trend away from using “popular” names and toward ones that are more unique. There are several ways that people are doing this. One is to adapt variant spelling of the name by changing/adding vowels, etc, e.g. Allyson instead of Allison. A second way that is popular in the African-American community is to use “African” names that have historically not been used in the US, e.g. Jamal/Jamaal (the trend in the past was to want to blend in and so people used typically European names). A third is to simply make up a new name (one of my grandson’s classmates is named Nevaeh, that’s heaven spelled backwards – a name that came out of nowhere and now ranks in the top 50).

My children have followed this trend. My son and daughter-in-law used “elvish” names and my daughter and son-in-law used biblical names for first names and British Isles names for middle names (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/02/grandchildren-names.html).

My Name

So, with all this background, where did my name come from? I’m the oldest of five children and was the first grandchild (of what would eventually be 18) on my mother’s side of the family. So my parents wanted to honor their heritage, but not in a way that would “choose sides”.

Thus, my middle name is “Harold”. This is not only the first name of my mother’s father (and thus recognition of her roots), but it is also the middle name of both my father and his father (thus recognizing his roots). The NameVoyager chart shows that this was a much more popular name a few decades before I was born, but its popularity had declined significantly. But because of its significance in my parent’s family trees, they decided to use it.

For my first name, Alan, they wanted something that was unique and did not appear in either of their family lines. Since there were no Alans in either of their families, and because Alan was just becoming popular, they chose it. [Note that I also suspect that they were still subconsciously thinking of the names of their fictitious children from when they were corresponding during WWII, so chose a name beginning with the letter “A”. (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/01/war-story-vernon-russell.html).

Interestingly, both of my brothers (Charles and Edward) were given names that were on the decline, with both of my sisters (Beth and Dawn) were given names that were just becoming popular. And neither of my sisters have names that follow the gender aspect of ending in a vowel that was mentioned earlier in this blog.

This has been a pretty long blog, but I hope that you’ve enjoyed it!