Middle name rant

[HarrysMum]

I've got Norris as a second name for my gg grandmother. Cannot find where it came from.

[Durham Lady]

For years I was told my paternal grandmother's maiden surname was Mitchell and that was why my father's brother Joseph was given the name Mitchell as a second name. None of my father's siblings had a full birth certificate so none knew what their mother's maiden name had been.
When I bought a full copy of my father's birth certificate grandma's surname was Jobes.
I later found my grandfather's youngest sister had married a Joseph Mitchell and along with grandfather's other siblings they had emigrated to the USA.

[Phoenix]

Sib's middle name commemorates a former mayor of Portsmouth: a distant relative and the only family member to achieve fame.
Unfortunately, the lustre was so lacking that Dad got the name wrong
Generations later, people may be puzzling over that middle name

[Nell]

Middle names, like first names, can be helpful, but sometimes they are not used or are misrecorded.

I made an error with someone in my tree, recorded at birth witha middle name as E. I wrongly assumed it was Emmets, a common male middle name in this branch of the family, going back to a gt gt x lots grandmother's maiden name. But it turns out he was named after his own mother's maiden name, Elsbury. Except that wasn't her maiden name - it was Aylesbury, but transmuted to Elsbury when she moved to London from Somerset!

[ElizabethHerts]

One of my third cousins has been in contact with me and he is descended from Louisa Hubbert Quintrell.

He had some items belonging to his grandmother and there was a letter in 1857 from a Louisa Hubbert to my great-great-grandfather offering condolences on the death of her dear friend Jane Wood, John's mother-in-law.

I did some sleuthing and have discovered that Louisa Ann Ellis married Nathaniel Hubbert by licence at Finsbury in 1832. They settled in Portsea and Nathaniel was a draper (as was Jane Wood and her husband Newbourn Wood).

Nathaniel Hubbert came from Lincolnshire, as did Newbourn Wood.

When John and Fanny Quintrell's sixth child was born in 1868, they named her Louisa Hubbert Quintrell after Fanny's mother's great friend. Louisa Ann Hubbert died in 1876 aged 76. She was born in Devon. She had a sad life inasmuch as she lost a lot of children in infancy and her husband died in 1844.

My third cousin has a lot of interesting stuff, including two photos of miniatures labelled "Mr and Mrs Smith" who we believe could be the parents of Jane Smith who married Newbourn Wood. The fashions look about right.

[marquette]

Several of our family were given the middle name of Brent, which we discovered was also the name of Thomas Brent, the blacksmith who lived and worked with my 3xg grandfather George Collis and his sons. Later, I discovered that the property at Wards Cross, Hurst, was left to George and his wife by HER maternal Aunt, Elizabeth Trumplett.

However, no mystery with the Dawsons and the Christies and their associated families - they used each other's surnames, so we end up with John Christie Dawson and John Dawson Christie, Hugh Whitmore Christie, Herbert Whitmore Dawson, George Christie Dawson, Joseph Hammett Dawson, Mary Ann Hammett Sturmy and Walter Christie Cooper.

[vita]

I've got two middle names appearing in my family - Hughes & Hawke, both a mystery

as to their origins. The latter was my grandfather, so I was hopeful about tracing that

as it wasn't too far back, but no luck so far.

[Macbev]

OH's Gould family has Wentworth and Husey persisting down through the generations in England, Australia and USA. No mystery, though I consider them to be odd names. The Goulds, who appear in the Heralds' Visitations of Dorset, intermarried with V.I.P families (Wentworths and Husseys/Huseys) and obviously made sure no one would ever forget it.
Fortunately, OH is related through his mother and was spared these names. Instead, we are saddled with Scottish expectations .......Archibalds and Johns