With this bizarre name...
Marianne Dashwood in Sense And Sensibility is eager to become Mrs Willoughby, but happy later on to settle for Mrs Brandon. Poor foolish Lydia Bennet in Pride And Prejudice cannot wait to sign her name as Lydia Wickham. How thoughtful of their creator, Jane Austen, to have settled on names that any woman might be pleased to acquire. Yet suppose Marianne had set her heart on a man with a traditional English surname such as Pouch or Vinegar, or Lydia had faced having to sign herself Lydia Uff : would they perhaps have hesitated?
It used to be a woman’s near-inevitable fate to take on the name of her husband. The first great investigator of the British surname, the Elizabethan William Camden, deplored any deviation from this tradition. ‘Women with us,’ he wrote, in his constantly delightful book Remains Concerning Britain, ‘do change their names and pass into their husbands’ names, and justly for that then non sunt duo, sed caro una [we are not two but one flesh]. ‘In the Netherlands,’ he adds, ‘a woman will retain her own surname alongside her husband’s – but I fear husbands will not like this note, for that some of their dames may be ambitiously over-pert and too-too forward to imitate it.’
Yet generations of women imagined no alternative, and anyone who researches the nation’s surnames will come to know how uncomfortable the choice could have been. One feels for the elderly impoverished widow assessed for the hearth tax in 17th-century Hampshire, whose name was Mrs Hated; or the woman in Broughton, Lincolnshire, one of the villages whose surname patterns I particularly studied, who took on the surname Hell. (Mr Hell, an innkeeper, had a live-in servant named Church.) Fortunately, the modern woman is no longer likely to encounter, let alone become enamoured of, a man called Chaceporc, Crakpot, Drunkard, Halfnaked or Swetinbedde: though the London phone book still offers, in one enticing sequence, Slankard, Slee, Sledge, Slomp, Sluce and Sly.
There was one exception to the rule. A man whose wife had a higher social status, and probably a higher income than his own, might abandon his surname for hers – just as Prince Philip, much to his dismay, was told that his children with Princess Elizabeth would have to be surnamed Windsor rather than Mountbatten.
So, for instance, one finds a Mr Joseph marrying a woman called Uttermare: their married name becomes Uttermare. But then, she is the lady of the manor of Hatch Beauchamp, Somerset, a distinction his humbler family cannot match. Sometimes the change is delayed until several years after a marriage. But here the motive is usually money.
The London Gazette, that noticeboard of the establishment, would issue by list people who, by Queen Victoria’s gracious permission, were switching their surnames, more often than not because of a legacy. This regularly occurred when there were no sons to perpetuate the family name. A wife’s father, perhaps, or a childless uncle, knowing he faced death, was determined the surname should not die with him. What better way to save it than to stipulate that the couple should supplant the husband’s born name with his wife’s? Fail to comply, and they’d sacrifice any hope of the money, the fine house, the parkland, and all that went with them.
There were, even then, daring couples who, defying Camden’s instruction, combined their names – a Mr Brown married a Miss Greive, to become the Brown-Greives. A Mr Dillwyn–Llewellyn wedded a Miss Venables – an heiress – and made a sandwich of her as they became Mr and Mrs Dillwyn-Venables-Llewellyn.
Nowadays such arrangements are commonplace, which is why doublebarrelled names, once seen as the preserve of the aristocracy, are becoming general. In generations to come, we shall see double-barrels espousing other double-barrels: just think of the mouthfuls we may have to get used to then. Perhaps even overtaking the longest single surname I found for my book: that of Sir Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.
One couple I knew adopted the alternative practice of ditching both the names they were born with and adopting something new and neutral. Sadly, the marriage did not last and he’s now back with the name he grew up with. There’s also a practice called meshing, where a couple merge their names: a Miss Harley and a Mr Gatts, The Daily Telegraph reported, had become Mr and Mrs Hatts; a Mr Pugh and a Miss Griffin united themselves as Puffins. Had that solution been around at the time, Marianne in Sense And Sensibility might have been tempted first by Willwood and then by Brandwood, while Lydia might have had to settle for Wicket; Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle in Pride And Prejudice might have come down the aisle as Mr and Mrs Darcett.
And yet it seems that Lydia’s lust to acquire the name of her man is not yet dead. The then Conservative MP Louise Bagshawe could hardly wait to ditch the name under which she had published successful novels for that of her second husband, Peter Mensch: ‘I had strong feelings of hero worship towards him,’ she told GQ magazine in 2011. ‘I was longing to brand myself with his name for a very long time.’
What’s In A Surname? A Journey From Abercrombie To Zwicker, by David McKie (Random House, £14.99).
It used to be a woman’s near-inevitable fate to take on the name of her husband. The first great investigator of the British surname, the Elizabethan William Camden, deplored any deviation from this tradition. ‘Women with us,’ he wrote, in his constantly delightful book Remains Concerning Britain, ‘do change their names and pass into their husbands’ names, and justly for that then non sunt duo, sed caro una [we are not two but one flesh]. ‘In the Netherlands,’ he adds, ‘a woman will retain her own surname alongside her husband’s – but I fear husbands will not like this note, for that some of their dames may be ambitiously over-pert and too-too forward to imitate it.’
Yet generations of women imagined no alternative, and anyone who researches the nation’s surnames will come to know how uncomfortable the choice could have been. One feels for the elderly impoverished widow assessed for the hearth tax in 17th-century Hampshire, whose name was Mrs Hated; or the woman in Broughton, Lincolnshire, one of the villages whose surname patterns I particularly studied, who took on the surname Hell. (Mr Hell, an innkeeper, had a live-in servant named Church.) Fortunately, the modern woman is no longer likely to encounter, let alone become enamoured of, a man called Chaceporc, Crakpot, Drunkard, Halfnaked or Swetinbedde: though the London phone book still offers, in one enticing sequence, Slankard, Slee, Sledge, Slomp, Sluce and Sly.
There was one exception to the rule. A man whose wife had a higher social status, and probably a higher income than his own, might abandon his surname for hers – just as Prince Philip, much to his dismay, was told that his children with Princess Elizabeth would have to be surnamed Windsor rather than Mountbatten.
So, for instance, one finds a Mr Joseph marrying a woman called Uttermare: their married name becomes Uttermare. But then, she is the lady of the manor of Hatch Beauchamp, Somerset, a distinction his humbler family cannot match. Sometimes the change is delayed until several years after a marriage. But here the motive is usually money.
The London Gazette, that noticeboard of the establishment, would issue by list people who, by Queen Victoria’s gracious permission, were switching their surnames, more often than not because of a legacy. This regularly occurred when there were no sons to perpetuate the family name. A wife’s father, perhaps, or a childless uncle, knowing he faced death, was determined the surname should not die with him. What better way to save it than to stipulate that the couple should supplant the husband’s born name with his wife’s? Fail to comply, and they’d sacrifice any hope of the money, the fine house, the parkland, and all that went with them.
There were, even then, daring couples who, defying Camden’s instruction, combined their names – a Mr Brown married a Miss Greive, to become the Brown-Greives. A Mr Dillwyn–Llewellyn wedded a Miss Venables – an heiress – and made a sandwich of her as they became Mr and Mrs Dillwyn-Venables-Llewellyn.
Nowadays such arrangements are commonplace, which is why doublebarrelled names, once seen as the preserve of the aristocracy, are becoming general. In generations to come, we shall see double-barrels espousing other double-barrels: just think of the mouthfuls we may have to get used to then. Perhaps even overtaking the longest single surname I found for my book: that of Sir Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.
One couple I knew adopted the alternative practice of ditching both the names they were born with and adopting something new and neutral. Sadly, the marriage did not last and he’s now back with the name he grew up with. There’s also a practice called meshing, where a couple merge their names: a Miss Harley and a Mr Gatts, The Daily Telegraph reported, had become Mr and Mrs Hatts; a Mr Pugh and a Miss Griffin united themselves as Puffins. Had that solution been around at the time, Marianne in Sense And Sensibility might have been tempted first by Willwood and then by Brandwood, while Lydia might have had to settle for Wicket; Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle in Pride And Prejudice might have come down the aisle as Mr and Mrs Darcett.
And yet it seems that Lydia’s lust to acquire the name of her man is not yet dead. The then Conservative MP Louise Bagshawe could hardly wait to ditch the name under which she had published successful novels for that of her second husband, Peter Mensch: ‘I had strong feelings of hero worship towards him,’ she told GQ magazine in 2011. ‘I was longing to brand myself with his name for a very long time.’
What’s In A Surname? A Journey From Abercrombie To Zwicker, by David McKie (Random House, £14.99).