Where Did Middle Names Originate?

Have you ever wondered why we have middle names or where they came from? I mean, is there any time you buy a plane ticket, register a new address or renew a piece of identification. In the United States having a middle name or even two is common. But early U.S. presidents were only only first and last named until John Quincy Adams. Even over a decade later, presidential middle names were not steady. So the real question is, when did that change and why?

In a Time article written by Merrill Fabry, she states that “students of Latin may remember some Romans having three names, but Karen Stern, a historian at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, says their naming system was not quite the same as today's use of a middle name. They used a ‘praenomen’ or personal name; a nomen or a family name, which has the same placement of a middle name but has a different function; and a cognomen which she says, was a nickname indicating an attribute or eventually, what branch of family you were from.” But, while Rome was an empire for hundreds of years, Stern says, the three - part name wasn't used for everyone in Rome or that entire period of time. Women tended to have two names, while slaves just had one.

Eventually the use the middle names scattered throughout Spain and France. During the first decade of the 19th century 50 percent of the boys were born with just one first name, 37 percent with two and 8 percent with both, a first and middle name. By the last decade of that century, just under 33 percent had one first name compared to 46 percent of boys had a middle name and 23 percent had two! Later, England's upper class slowly started incorporating a middle name into their names too. By the end of the 19th century, though only 10 percent of British population had a middle name in the 1800 versus 40 percent in France.

Years pass and early modern Scotland participates in the new trend! In 1780, when their popularity rose dramatically. Nearly 99 percent of children were born into this world with middle names. In general, back then in Europe, middle names became incredibly popular in the 19th century. Furthermore, the United States had the same timing and the same meaning of middle names… but why? It’s easy: because a name has a lot of work to do, so there's a clear benefit of spreading that idea of a middle name around. “Crook says that in the names he studied, ‘family is the most important thing that gets referenced’ in middle names,” (Time.com, Merrill Fabry). An example would be such as in the 1900s, some women would make their middle name their maiden name. During the 1930s, H.L. Mencken writes that “it was common for women to do so in the U.S.” as well.

To conclude, not everyone has a middle name and not everyone has three or more middle names. But you should be thankful for what your parents named you and if they did, look into what they named you off of. And if they named you off of a family member, now your educated that that tradition formulated in Schottland.