Surnames As Middle Names May Be Powerful Clues

Do you ever wonder how people come up with their children’s names? Sometimes it’s easy if they are juniors or have a more common name like John or Elizabeth. And then sometimes you have to search a little deeper. In this blog post, you’ll discover how surnames are used as more unusual middle names.

A Few Reasons Why Surnames May Be Used As Middle Names

Keeping Family Stories Alive: Adding a surname as a middle name was a way to remember where we came from. It helped to keep important family names going through the generations, especially in cultures that value family history.

Avoiding Confusion in Big Families: When many people in a family had the same first name, using a surname as a middle name was a way to tell everyone apart.

Honoring Special Family Members: Sometimes, adding a surname as a middle name was a way to show respect to someone important in the family.

Showing Family Connections: Using a surname as a middle name could also show when families joined together through marriage or alliances.

Preservation of Heritage: Some families use surnames to maintain a connection to their cultural or ethnic heritage. It serves as a reminder of their roots.

Honoring Important Community Members: Using the surname of a prominent member of the community wasn’t out of the question. I have an example of that below.

Examples In My Family

The Dettinger Surname

I wrote about my great-grandfather, Eli Bernard Stabley, in a previous blog post. You can read about him here. He and his wife, Ida Jane, had two sons, Bernard Dettinger Stabley, and Richard Luther Stabley.

The middle name of Luther came from one of Ida’s brothers. Bernard’s middle name, Dettinger, was Ida’s maiden name. It was common (and still is) to use the woman’s maiden name as one of her children’s middle names. Here’s Ida in 1947.

Ida was born in York County, Pennsylvania in 1879 to John George Dettinger and Julia Dirk. Their family numbered twelve children with Ida right in the middle.

She and Eli married on 17 March 1903 in York County. According to the newspaper, they had a very sweet ceremony.¹

Ida passed away in February 1957. Her obituary is short but packed with plenty of information.² Newspapers can provide such wonderful details of our ancestors’ lives.

The McCampbell Surname

My second example is from my 3x great-grandfather, James McCampbell Ashmore. He was born in 1821 in Jefferson County, Tennessee to David H. Ashmore and Mary Shadden. He died there in 1895.

The name McCampbell sticks out as a possible surname, but after what seems like a never-ending search, I could find no one else in the family with that name. This is where researching the historical context of your ancestors comes in handy.

The census closest to James’ birth was in 1820, but searching for that was a bust. The 1820 census for Jefferson County, Tennessee is lost. So, I looked at the 1830 census. There is only one person with the surname of McCampbell in Jefferson County…John McCampbell – Rev. John McCampbell.

I would consider a minister to be an important man in the community, so I did a search that led me to a website giving the names of ministers from that time. One of those listed was John McCampbell, D.D.

We will never know for sure, but the fact that the name McCampbell is so unique and someone lived in the community with that surname – well, that’s a little too much coincidence for me. I’m hypothesizing that Rev. McCampbell meant something to James’ parents and that’s why James has the middle name of McCampbell.

Finally

So, just from these two examples, you can see how surnames might end up as one of your ancestor’s middle names. Examining the naming pattern in a family is so important in our genealogy research. Those surnames can surface anywhere and with anyone so keep that in mind when you’re looking for your ancestors.

Genealogy tip: If you are researching an ancestor and they don’t have a typical given name for their middle name, consider it could be a surname from a generation or two before or the maiden name of the mother.

Do you need help finding clues for your genealogy research? I’m here to help. Click below.

¹ “Pretty Home Wedding,” The Gazette (York, Pennsylvania), p. 2, col. 3; digital image, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com: accessed 22 Oct 2019).

² “Deaths and Burials,” The York Dispatch (York, Pennsylvania), p. 28, col. 1: digital image, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com: accessed 21 Mar 2020).