Double-barrelled name
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In English-speaking and some other western countries, a double-barrelled name is a family name with two parts, which may or may not be joined with a hyphen, for example Bowes-Lyon or Fraser Darling. The term is an analogy with double-barrelled shotgun.
Double-barrelled names may be formed for a variety of reasons. Some are formed when a man's and woman's family names are combined upon marriage, thus forming a new two-part surname, or when children are given surnames combining those of both parents. Double-barrelled names may also be used by children who are not brought up by their birth-parents to combine the surname of a birth-parent with that of an adoptive parent, or the surname of their biological father with that of a stepfather. Other families believe that the act of consistently passing on only the father's name is patriarchal in nature, and choose double-barrelled names for feminist reasons.
Double-barrelled names are sometimes adopted when the man has a common surname such as Smith or Jones which the couple want to avoid after marriage; hence double-barrelled names often incorporate a common surname. For instance, if Mary Howard married John Smith, they could choose to become Mary and John Howard-Smith (with the man's surname usually going second). In the vast majority of cases, though, they would simply opt for Mary and John Smith.
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.
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 a double-barrelled husband married a single-barrelled wife, or vice versa). Nowadays such names are almost always abbreviated in everyday use to a single- or double-barrelled version. There are even a few quadruple-barrelled surnames (e.g. 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.
Many double-barrelled names are written without a hyphen, e.g. John Maynard Smith, Iain Duncan Smith. (This can cause confusion as to whether the surname is double-barrelled or not.) One notable current example of this form of double-barrelling is Andrew Lloyd Webber. Notable persons with unhyphenated double-barrelled names include two former British Prime Ministers, David Lloyd George and Andrew Bonar Law, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, Amy Rose McMullen and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.
In France a recent practice has been to use a double hyphen -- (not a long hyphen) to distinguish between recently formed double barrelled names and ancient hyphenated family names (French: nom composé).
In Germany a double-barrelled name (German: Doppelname) is generally joined with a hyphen and includes only one hyphen. Other types of double-barrelled names are not accepted by restrictive German name law. However, exceptions are made for immigrants, and for marriages where the double-barrelled name already was the official name of one partner before marriage. The crewmembers of the famous First World War cruiser SMS Emden were allowed to add the name Emden with a hyphen to their surname as a special honour.
In Poland a double-barrelled name (Polish: nazwisko złożone ), is generally joined with a hyphen and by law includes only one hyphen. Polish surnames, Nazwisko, like those in most of Europe, are hereditary and generally patrilineal, i.e. passed from the father on to his children. A married woman usually adopts her husband's name. However, other combinations are legally possible. The wife may keep her maiden name (nazwisko panieńskie) or add her husband's surname to hers, thus creating a double-barrelled name (nazwisko złożone).
Family names first appeared in Poland ca. 15th century and were only used by the nobility szlachta. Originally the nobles formed Warriors Clans whose names survived in the names of their coats of arms. Eventually, members of one clan would split into separate families with different surnames, usually derived from the name of the village they owned. Sometimes the family name and the clan name (associated with the arms) would be used together and form a double-barrelled name.
The most striking peculiarity of the Polish heraldic system is that a coat of arms does not belong to a single family. A number of unrelated families (sometimes hundreds of them), usually with a number of different family names, may share a coat of arms, and each coat of arms has a name of its own.
One side-effect of this unique arrangement was that it became customary to refer to noblemen by both their family name and their coat of arms/clan name. For example: Jan Zamoyski herbu Jelita means Jan Zamoyski of the Jelita coat of arms (though it is often translated as ...of the clan Jelita ). From 15th to 17th centuries, the formula seems to copy the ancient Roman naming convention: praenomen (or given name), nomen gentile (or Gens/Clan name) and cognomen (surname), following the Renascent fashion. So we got: Jan Jelita Zamoyski, forming a double-barrelled name (nazwisko złożone). Later, the double-barrelled name will be joined with a hyphen: Jan Jelita-Zamoyski.
After the First and Second World Wars some resistance fighters added their wartime noms de guerre to their original family names. This was yet another reason for creating double-barrelled names. Examples include Edward Rydz-Śmigły, Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, and Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski. Some artists, such as Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, also added their noms de plume to their surnames. [1] [2]
The song "Tom O'Malley-Finkel-Harris-Smith" by Lou Nathanson makes fun of this phenomenon by asking "What will happen when all the people with hyphenated last names start having grandchildren?" In the song, names are eventually limited by law to 10.
