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Archiver > DEVON > 2002-07 > 1027981925


From: "Jonathan Frayne" <>
Subject: Re: [DEV] Something I've noticed.
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 23:37:52 +0100
References: <22.2c497a20.2a7506cc@aol.com>


Hi All,

I just have two things to add.

I have come across an example where inheritance through the female line was
dependent upon the husband changing his name to that of the family into
which he married. this seems to have been accomplished by first adding a
hyphen and later dropping of he original family name of the in-marrying man.
I may be very wrong in this, but years ago I read the family tree of the
Acland family of Tiverton and I think they can count their ancestry back to
the Conqueror, but they do rely on this 'trick' at one stage to ensure the
descent of the family name (not the genes, of course!!).

The other point I would make is that in my own, rather more humble family, I
have a brother with the middle name of Colbourne. To save any queries as to
why. My family had a relative, elderly at the time, who had that as his dead
wife's maiden name. It was supposed to trigger sympathy and a mention in the
will. In this it succeeded, "what a silly name to saddle a kid with"!

1) People change names to preserve a descent that is important to them

2) Adding a middle name can have quite mercenary motives!

Jon

Barnstaple On-Line Parish Clerk
Web site at www.barnstapleopc.co.uk


----- Original Message -----
From: <>
To: <>
Sent: Sunday, July 28, 2002 9:35 AM
Subject: [DEV] Something I've noticed.


> Hi All
>
> We often tend to think that people with first and second names that
> appear to be surnames, are often the surnames of families that were those
of
> their grandmother or mother. Which they most certainly are in many cases.
> However I have found a trend for this in the late 1700's and 1800's not to
be
> the actual case. These names quite often appear to go back over 1000 years
to
> relationships in the 1600's and even before. Sometimes they are not even
> related names. I've seen some of the Devon family surnames often used
where
> there is no relationship at all. I rather suspect that giving a Child the

> name of Courtenay for example, may perhaps be more in line with trying to
kid
> people into thinking there may be a relationship to the Earl of Devon. One
> family I recently looked into, being remotely related, named all their
> children after the most famous of the Devon families, however there
appears
> to be no links to any of them that I could readily find.
>
> Regards Terry Blackmore
>
>
> ==== DEVON Mailing List ====
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> (http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/genuki/DEV/) and the Devon FHS
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>

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