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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Scrumper on Wednesday 25 December 19 21:17 GMT (UK)
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My mum's middle name was Martin, her cousin's middle name was Lawrence.
This has always puzzled me, has anyone found something similar in their family tree?
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They may have been called after people with Martin and Lawrence as surnames.
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Lots of females have Martin as a middle name - just search freebmd births for *Martin in 1910 (do not specify surname) to see a few.
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Yes, I've got one - Emma Henry Ware, daughter of Cyrus Henry Ware. There was no occurrence of Henry as a surname in this family.
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It would usually be a son who would be given their father’s first name as a middle name.
Did they have sons?
Were your Mum and her cousin the first born in each family?
What middle names were Martin and Lawrence’s other children given? Are there any themes?
Are any family who might know the answer still living?
Are these the only two examples you have found in your family?
I don’t pretend to know the answer and unless you can find someone who knows for sure, it can only ever be speculation. I am just trying to see if there might be a reason for this in your examples, hence the questions. If there are only two it doesn’t see to be a tradition I wouldn’t say. ;)
Even if you find other families have done the same, they may have different reasons for doing so, and I don’t know that there was any kind of tradition regarding this.
Both Martin and Lawrence are fairly common surnames so if you find other females being given similar middle names, it could have been the mother or grandmother’s maiden name. Further research would be needed to confirm.
Surnames as middle names is pretty common for both males and females. If females were named to honour their fathers you might expect to see feminine versions of the father’s name, but maybe their mothers didn’t like this idea. :) (and the feminine version of Lawrence is? :-\ )
Just my take on it .....
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My wife's middle name is Whitfield, which was inherited from a grandfather and his father. Her mother thought it was something to do with a small village of that name, but it was actually a common family name from Alston in east Cumberland. Hardly a useful name for a girl though.
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Hello -
My grandfather had a sister named Maria Joseph McKernan. She had a brother named John Joseph.
Nora Joseph Barnacle married James Joyce, who was at school with my grandfather in Dublin.
craggagh.
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Middle Eastern countries do the same and the masculine middle name indicates who the girls father is.
Jamjar
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And there's good old Lizzie Andrew Borden, named in honor of her father [not that it did him much good in the end].
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One branch of my Suffolk line developed the habit of using a well-respected family surname as a first christian name for their eldest sons. Had it been the Garnham family or the Blythes or even the Southgates this might have been a perfectly acceptable way to carry on. Unfortunately the name in question was Pearle. I shudder to think of the miseries they inflicted on their sons and the torture the poor lads endured in the school playgrounds of the area. Fortunately this habit did not continue - probably because the victims of this little bit of insanity knew better.
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I have quite a few families on my tree who gave the fathers Christian name to both male and female children as a middle name. They all came from Flintshire and the Flintshire cheshire border and were mostly fishermen or mariners. Don’t know of this was a general or regional thing
Arolyn
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My mother told me about a family where each child was given the fathers first name as their middle name. After he died all the children changed their surnames to hyphenate their middle name and surname. So, for example they went from Fred Joe Bloggs to Mr/Miss Joe-Bloggs. This was in Australia last century.
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Yes husbands grandma was Catherine George,but not sure why as her father was Samson.
Barb
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In our family the mother’s maiden surname was given as two of the sons’ middle names.
John Cordley Cole ,who died aged 14 so the next boy born was also John Cordley Cole.
There are a few generations in the cemeteries of Bathurst and Sofala N.S.W,,
The mother who named her youngest boys so was left behind in Lincolnshire when her five older boys emigrated to the goldfields in 1853. They named their sons after their mother’s family.
I like it and had I got so far back in family history when I was naming my son’s I too would have used it.
Viktoria.
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and the feminine version of Lawrence is? :-\
It would be Lauren.
Although Laurence is the feminine form of Laurent, the French version of Lawrence.
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My great grandfather's first and middle names were Maude Stansfield. I kept finding his relationship to head-of-household on some sites given as 'daughter'. I tried to get this corrected where I found it - 'daughter?' was the initial response. I have now got as far as having him marked down as 'daughter son'!!
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and the feminine version of Lawrence is? :-\
It would be Lauren.
Although Laurence is the feminine form of Laurent, the French version of Lawrence.
Lawrence is more usually the surname,Laurence the first or Christian name .
There is no hard and fast rule however.
It is associated with the Laurel wreath of victory .
One of my sons is named Laurence.
Viktoria.
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In our family the mother’s maiden surname was given as two of the sons’ middle names.
John Cordley Cole ,who died aged 14 so the next boy born was also John Cordley Cole.
There are a few generations in the cemeteries of Bathurst and Sofala N.S.W,,
The mother who named her youngest boys so was left behind in Lincolnshire when her five older boys emigrated to the goldfields in 1853. They named their sons after their mother’s family.
I like it and had I got so far back in family history when I was naming my sons I too would have used it.
Viktoria.
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Sorry, don’tknow why this post has appeared again, I saw an error and tried to correct it in the original,the corrected form has appeared here but the original stays uncorrected !
No great matter .
Cheerio.
Viktoria.
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and the feminine version of Lawrence is? :-\
It would be Lauren.
Although Laurence is the feminine form of Laurent, the French version of Lawrence.
Lawrence is more usually the surname,Laurence the first or Christian name .
There is no hard and fast rule however.
It is associated with the Laurel wreath of victory .
One of my sons is named Laurence.
Viktoria.
My son is also called Lawrence (spelled that way) and when we recently went to see the film Little Women, I whispered to him that the name of the hero (his surname, though) was one of the reasons I chose his name.
I'd thought it would be nice for him to be called Lawrie, as in the book, but in fact he's either called Lawrence or Loz.
I also wish I'd known more about traditional naming patterns from family history research, before naming my children, as I might have been influenced to do something different.
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I also shorten Laurence to Laurie ,but his brother and sister always use his full name as does his wife.My O.H. called him Laurie too.
He is named after a little boy who was a playmate when I was an evacuee .
He was lovely ,then whilst doing my training there was a gorgeous baby named Laurence I loved so much ,so Bonny and happy.
You were not supposed to nave favourites but he was exceptional.
Our Laurence is lovely , as I am sure your Lawrence is too.
Viktoria.