Dear LPG readers, 

Do you have a name which has left you wondering what inspired your parents when they got to the registry office to record your existence? 

I know that they were much younger when they were asked for the answer to that age-old question, “…and what shall he be named?” and I have no doubt that many of us remember being the parent who had to supply something that the baby would not be too ashamed of in years to come. Perhaps it is something that a lot of parents realise they have to make a final decision about quite suddenly, even though the speculation usually starts as soon as there is a bump. 

I am so glad that LPG only asks for initials when attributing our postings because, while my last name is not really my parents’ fault, and most people have a habit of growing into their first names, I cannot think of any reason why my parents left me with such an unfortunate set of middle ones. 

I suppose that most of us can be grateful that middle names often give us an excuse to remember our grandparents or other members of the family, a historical or religious icon, or some current celebrity, and most of us don’t have to use all of them too often (unless we deem the first one so bad that we do an unofficial swap). 

We can be glad that we were not named after an entire football team, which the internet tells us has happened at least six times in the UK. The internet also tells us that a German man born in 1914 was named Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff Sr., and there is now a young American lady with a name that has more than 1,000 letters in it. 

Have you ever noticed how officialdom has a habit of putting your entire name on your birth and marriage certificates? You usually don’t need to record the middle details that often once you are all grown up, but learning it all when you are young must be a nightmare if it is particularly long. The embarrassment of having it read out in its entirety during one’s wedding ceremony might well be one reason that so many more people skip the wedding and just decide to live together these days. 

Having more than one name, in a world where there are so many of us, has to help when it comes to working out who is who in this world, but perhaps we need to remind all those younger generations who will be looking us up in centuries to come that we were not responsible for any of the names we were saddled with, although the fact that we were given them may have a bearing on the ones they end up with. Let’s hope that the really humiliating ones stay in the middle… 

VL, Brockley 

 

 

 

VL offers a few internet facts…

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