Names, Surnames, and Traditions

Surnames

Surnames or family names as we know them today in America and Europe are a relatively recent development. For cultures that have been administratively organized for longer, such as China, family names have been around for much longer and often come first. In other places, such as Iceland, the population is small enough that people either go by one name or their given name with a patronymic. But as the English culture knows them, most surnames came from four sources:

• Patronymics, meaning after the father, such as Johnson, Peterson, Abramson, or Pierson. At some point, these started being passed down even though it was now the grandfather’s or great-grandfather’s name. In other words, James Johnson has a son who is known as Henry Jameson, but then Henry’s son is known as James Jameson, rather than James Henson (or Harrison or Henderson). There are patronymics in most European languages. The Normans from France used Fitz, such as FitzAlan or FitzJames. This was actually related to the French “fils de” meaning son of. The O’, Mac or Mc in Irish and Scottish names means “son of” as in McHugh or O’Neill. In Spanish and Portuguese, the name has an –ez (es) ending, so Perez or Peres for son of Pedro. Some other examples: Alvaro-Alvarez, Sancho-Sanchez, Gonzalo-Gonzalez, Rodrigo-Rodriguez, etc. Slavic countries have the –ovic(h) ending: Petrovic, Ivanovich, etc. In some cultures, they do the same with daughters. So, Icelandic has such an ending that an English speaker would easily parse: Guðmundsdóttir, would be the daughter of Guðmund. In Slavic countries, it is often something like –ovna, so Petrovna or Ivanova, etc. And just to really mess with people, the Icelanders may also use their mother’s name instead of their father’s, such as Helgasson.
• Place names such as Casford, Hemphill, de Montagne, de Ville, von Liechtenstein, van Dyke, Greco, Franco, Braxton, Washington, Stanley, Osborn, Murgatroyd, Presley, Prescott, Preston, and many others.
• Occupational names such as Miller, Smith, Bauer, Schmidt, Cooper, Walker, Weaver, Montanier, Fossoyeur, Stuart, Carter, Cook, Baker, Fletcher, Archer, Benbow, Clark, Singer, Cantor, Sexton, Arkwright, Schreiber, Scrivener, Jardine, Guerrero, and many more. Every language has their own.
• Nicknames sometimes came down this way. This is a very old tradition. In Rome, it was very frequent with these sorts of names being granted, and then the whole line from then on might be known by that name. For instance, the fellow we know as Julius Cæsar had this sort of name. His given name was Gaius. His family was the Iulii, which is where the Julius comes from. Cæsar was a branch of the family where some ancestor had been given an additional nickname that meant “hairy” and stuck not only with him, but with his descendants for generations. Oh, and Julius may come from a word meaning “downy-bearded” or “youthful,” so it’s a twofer. Some other examples might be: Short, Strong, Turnbull, Little, Long, Albrecht, White, Brown, Bullock, Barrett, Tyson, Beake, Hawk, Belcher, Blue, Wilbur, Wolfe, Lobo, Ochoa, Lowell, Russell, Rubio, Roux, Bieber, Breitbarth, Geier, Boivin, Butts, Cox, Baines, Frost, Sparks, Gully, Haggard, Proudfoot, Pope, Savage, Stark, Sweet, Campbell, Cruickshank, Longshanks, Cabello, Kruckel, Guerra, Moreno, Bouchard, Kahler, Kneller, Maus, and many more.

Another factor in names is sometimes they were changed to accommodate new languages or changing spelling mores or just because people were illiterate and spelling was up to those who were writing the name down. The author’s family name was first recorded in the 1600’s in Virginia as Witheford, then changed to Weatherford, and was at least once recorded as Rutherford. Another example cited elsewhere on the site is the name of Thomas Ramsey, whose family had at one time been de Ramesie and later Ramsay. The spelling Stuart comes from Mary, Queen of Scots’ stay in France. To get the French to say the name Stewart as other than Stayvart, she had to change the spelling so as not to upset their delicate orthography. Bourbon was a name derived from a place. In France it was “de Bourbon.” When the family spread to Spain, it became “de Borbón.” In Parma, they became “di Borbone.”

Finally, maternal line names or wife’s maiden names would sometimes be revived, either in a hyphenated form such as von Habsburg-Lothringen, Cybo-Malaspina, Douglas-Hamilton, or Pelham-Clinton. Sometimes someone would just use the wife’s or maternal line name altogether, such as Hugh Smithson, who became Hugh Percy when his wife’s family titles were at stake. Another good example is all of the people who changed their surname to Romanov when the Russian Imperial Crown might sit upon their heads. The last male Romanov died in 1730. In 1740, a Guelph took the throne, but was overthrown by a Romanov female cousin who was succeeded by an Oldenburg who went by Romanov. Both forms of name revival were very common in Great Britain. For instance, the Spencers who were descended from John Churchill revived the name as the hyphenated surname of Spencer-Churchill. Some of the branches have dropped the Spencer in common discourse, such as Winston Churchill, the late prime minister.

So, what has all of this to do with the Hidden Angels Series? Let us count the ways.

The Bourbons are a good example. First of all, that was the name that stuck, but not the only name the family had used. They were considered a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty. Who were the Capetians? The descendents of Hughes Capet, the first major king of the dynasty. Why was he called “Capet?” Because he was the “head,” the chief, or maybe because he had a big head. Either way, Capet was not so much his last name as a nickname. So, what was his family name? As mentioned above, family names are more of a modern convenience to separate out the twenty million Jacobs born last year alone in the USA and Canada. But, tracing back, the first mention of the family relates them to a fellow named Robert, so some refer to the whole clan as Robertians or des Robertines. At the moment, the author has most of the branches of the family in his database as “de Bourbon.” The author may change that in the future and start using the various spellings in different countries just to confuse people or go to des Robertines to really confuse people. So, the reports out of the database show people with names like Louis de Bourbon, which would cover about fifteen kings of France before the whole middle name idea came up.

Second, there is a family of fictional characters from Spain who will appear in upcoming volumes who still use the old patronymic system. The first of this family shows up in the third volume and is named Gonzalo Rodrigo Alvarez. His son, who was scheduled to appear in the sixth volume, was Rodrigo Alvaro Gonzalez. His son, also scheduled for the sixth volume, was Alvaro Gonzalo Rodriguez. Finally, at some point in whatever volume covers the 1890’s if the series gets that far, is his son, Gonzalo Rodrigo Alvarez, who finally marries into a branch of the West family.

Third, several characters change their names. The most obvious who has appeared in the published volumes already is James Abraham West (I655) who starts using the pseudonym of Saul FitzGoliath. His companion and cousin, Chastity Diana Forbes (I634), uses the name Delilah FitzGoliath to keep with the Philistine theme. Another example was Edward Adam West (I661) who fled justice after a tavern fight in Georgia and went to Mobile in what was French territory at the time where he assumed the name of Alain Edouard Jouet. He later changed back to an English-language name as Alan Edward Ward. He took the Ward name since he was the “Guardian of Meropis,” a designation given him for helping to organize opposition to US and Spanish forces invading the West Florida Colony. Zebedee West, Earl of Clarent changed to the surname of Clarent due to his staying with Britain’s side in the American Revolutionary War. The same was true of the sons of Marcus Aurelius West who were associated with Aurelius Hall. During the war, they started using their father’s middle name as a surname. An example of this from the (as of this writing) upcoming third volume is when a branch of the Wouldhave family decides to take on the fictional name of Elphberg. So, in cases like these, there may be a break in the names or multiple breaks as one traces the family tree.

Fourth, there is an interesting tradition regarding names that is used in the Scandinavian countries. When someone is ennobled, they would often receive a name related to what was on their coat of arms. So, a character with a battered, old sword on his coat of arms might be called “af Antikkesværd” in Danish. And since one of Matthew West’s many daughters became the mistress of a Danish king who decided to ennoble his natural progeny and give them arms and titles, this sort of thing may be seen in the series.

Place Names

Places sometimes change names. This can happen in several ways.

• Time can alter pronunciations, which can lead to spelling changes. Charleston, South Carolina was originally spelled out as “Charles Town.” This confused one of the early test readers as he was from Massachusetts where a city by that name retains its original spelling and two words.
• Sometimes places are renamed in honor of a person or event. There may be a street in your city named after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Chances are that this was done within the last fifty years, while the street may be much older. Quincy, Massachusetts was originally part of Braintree and was renamed for one Colonel John Quincy.
• Like some people with bad reputations, some places may take a new and picturesque name to try to fool potential settlers. In 1992 East Detroit, Michigan changed to Eastpointe, as one example. Berlin, Ontario was renamed Kitchener during World War I. The same de-Germanification happened in Australia and other parts of the British Empire at the time.
• Places can also be renamed by conquerors. Going back to Quincy, the area was called Passonagessit by the aboriginal people who had inhabited it. New Zealand is a nice name, but very European. Could it have been called something else before that? Aotearoa, perhaps? There are large areas of Russian East Asia that used to belong to Qing China. Many of the names today sound much more Russian than Chinese. Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk? No, not Chinese at all. A subsidiary version of this is through revolutions, such as the Russian Empire becoming the USSR.
• This last effect can be true of purchasers, as well. Russkaya Amerika became Alaska, although the name was already somewhat in use by the Russians. Alexandria, Virginia was named for the family that owned the area in which locals wanted to incorporate a town.
• There are also places with disputed names, which can be a political minefield. For instance there are the British Falkland Islands, which the Argentines call the Malvinas.

So, how does this apply to the series? Well, here are some examples: