The significance of a name

[justontime]

I hope that some of you will be able to offer advice please. I have a bit of a mystery man in my family tree His name was Charles Joseph Eldridge Jones c1874-1947. To cut a very long story short he was brought up in a reasonably well to do household as a nephew. He could have been a nephew of Susan Catherine Weyth whose maiden name was Jones but we have not been able to find his birth. On various forms he gives the name of his father as Charles Eldridge Jones but it has not been possible to find any trace of him.

We know quite a lot about the life of Charles Joseph Eldridge Jones, but not about his origins. Charles J E Jones gave the name Eldridge to all of his children as a middle name and in turn many of them passed it on to their own children in the same way. I would love to know why he did this. Elsewhere in my tree I have examples of the mother's or grandmother's maiden name being given as a middle name. As we can not be sure of his origins it is impossible to rule this out but there is no obvious link. It is tempting to wonder if Eldridge is a clue to his origins, perhaps if he was illegitimate it could be a clue to his father, but somehow I doubt it. I would be grateful for any comments or suggestions about why the name Eldridge seemed so important to him. Thank you.

[avm228]

Hi

I'm not sure whether this other thread is yours or connected with you, but there's a good bit more background information on Charles there:

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=509998.msg3663332;topicseen

The Joseph Eldridge who in 1871 was a neighbour of Susan's stepmother Martha (according to that thread) certainly sounds worth a look.

[justontime]

Thank you, yes, I know about the other thread. I have been working with that poster (another relative) on this for years. I deliberately kept the information brief as I was hoping for opinion/experience re why and when surnames are used as middle names.

Personally I don't think the neighbour is significant (at least we have not been able to find anything to link him to the Charles Joseph Eldridge Jones). We have done loads of work on the theory that he is illegitimate and that his name offers a clue to his father without success. Anyway would he really want to preserve evidence of his illegitimacy by giving the name to every one of his children? I tend to think that there is another explanation, maybe social climbing, perhaps Eldridge Jones is more aspirational than plain old Jones (my last name is Jones and I wouldn't swap it for anything!). It does seem that it was thought of and used as a double surname. Or it could be a way of preserving the maiden name of a mother or grandmother, I don't know.

[avm228]

The use of surnames as middle names in England in the 19th century can in my experience very often be traced to one of the following:

1. It's the maiden name of the mother or one of the grandmothers of the child.
2. (In cases of illegitimacy) it can represent the natural father's surname, given as a middle name where the child's surname is the mother's maiden name.
3. It can be a godparent's name, or that of an honoured family friend.
4. The name may be chosen as a nod to an unrelated "heroic" figure such as a military leader.

No doubt there are others, but these are the ones I have come across most often.

[justontime]

Thank you amv228, that is just the sort of information I was looking for. I would be interested to hear from others about their findings concerning the use of surnames as middle names.

[hiyamarra]

In my ancestry the surname of am illegitimate childs father was used as the surname of the child. Several years later when the mother married another man the child took the new surname but retained the first surname as a middle name
This middle name was retained throughout the generations for all male children until eventually becoming a hyphenated surname

[GrahamSimons]

To add to the list of possibilities, I've found some where a surname-as-middle-name was clearly picked from way back in a family tree, several generations back, with no evidence of the name being used in the intervening generations. I suspect I'm muddying some waters that are already pretty opaque here!

[SWar]

Maybe look to the wider family.
My g.grandmother gave her new born son the names of her sister’s husband, the child’s uncle.  Around the same time that uncle gave her eldest son an apprenticeship.

Sue

[justontime]

Thank you hiyamarra, GrahamSimons and SWar, you have given me plenty to think about.