…but I only just found out that the name of Britney’s younger sister, Jami Lynn, is a portmanteau of the names of the parents, Jamie and Lynne. How on earth Britney missed out on either parent’s name is unknown. Perhaps they met in Brittany.
I get the appeal of family names passed down through generations. My own children have their grandparents’ names as middle names. But I find the idea of giving a child exactly the same name as a parent rather … possessive. I can see that it might briefly seem like a cute idea, but to me it seems kinda creepy. Passing on a name from an older generation is about honouring ancestors and familial continuity, naming a child after yourself seems to be more about stamping ownership and expectations.
The Spears parents don’t even have the excuse of it being a family tradition, as the internet means that I can easily check the names of all four of Jamie Lynn’s grandparents. Sure, there is the American tradition of naming sons after their fathers (and younger sons after grandfathers and uncles) so that you ended up not only with young men named Junior but also young men nicknamed Chip, Trip/Trey, Skip, Ivy/Dru and Quint, etc., but that tradition is a northeastern one, not a Southern one, and besides these nicknames themselves are testament to the wish for people not to be habitually called by the exact same name as someone else in their family.
I guess at least giving a daughter a portmanteau name from both her parents is about a child being a blend of both parents, and not just some “chip off the old block”. The whole idea still kinda gives me the creeps though.
Categories: history, relationships, Sociology
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My dutch forbears followed the tradition of naming a child after it’s deceased sibling of the same sex, until an infant survived. In one of my ancestral families, I recall that this resulted in 4 successive children being called by the same name. I can only imagine how this amplified the grief.
The kids in our family all got one of our parents’ names as a middle name. (Bro got Dad’s first name; 3 girls got Mom’s first, middle, and maiden names.) As middle names, that never bothered me, but I’m basically with you on naming kids after their own parents. Al’s a III, hates his name, and is especially bitter because his father and grandfather hated the name, too. It’s not a name you’d ordinarily derive “Al” from, and his dad goes by Bud, so there was seriously no point in having a junior or III. And yet, there are both.
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My American husband has his maternal grandmothers maiden name for his middle name ‘Breck’ and his sister has the other side ‘Pettigrew’
Which is kinda cool i think.
I can only imagine how this amplified the grief.
I imagine if it amplified the grief they wouldn’t do it. I’d be reluctant to assign contemporary attitudes, shaped by radically different expectations of mortality, to your forbears’ thinking.
Practice in my family for the last 4 or 5 generations at least was to alternate two first names for the eldest son. My parents broke that rule for me, but I reintroduced it for my own son.
On the other hand, an old schoolfriend had the first name as his father (curiously, he was the youngest son, not the oldest) but he was always known by his middle name. Most classmates didn’t even know his first name.
I got a name that my mother simply liked. She had been browsing through calendars and books of names (a note: in Poland at that time you could only give an officially listed name) quite discouraged until she found my name. The masculine version. And then the feminine, with a final “a” added. But I still celebrate my nameday (Polish tradition) on the “guy nameday.” Like my mother hers. So that’s a bit of a short family tradition.
The funny thing is that when I moved to Austria, some people seemed “disappointed” that my name wasn’t “Polish enough,” in their opinion. Well, folks, not everyone can be a Katarzyna. And I quite enjoy having a name that my mother carefully chose for me.
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My family follows the Jewish tradition of only repeating names when the bearer is dead, which I like — there’s room for using family names without the possibility of confusion.
The folk lore reasoning behind the practice is interesting too. The idea is that if a child or baby has the same name as an older relative, when the Angel of the Death comes to take the elder they might take the baby by mistake.
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Our kids each have their own first name, and then relos names for middle and third names. Our daughters middle name is a conversion of both her grandmothers’ middle names into one name. We felt that was a good way for them to have their own identity, but still feel part of the family because they are named for family members.
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I’d be reluctant to assign contemporary attitudes, shaped by radically different expectations of mortality, to your forbears’ thinking.
This is a common misconception; that because infant mortality was so high, the grief over losing a child was somehow less. There are a lot of contemporary accounts (18th Century) which show this was simply not the case. Of course I cannot know that as the woman bore each successive child, only to see her die before the age of 4, that the repetition of the name did not spark memories of her previous child.
Fiance and I have sorted out our future kids’ middle names – His father’s first name, and my father’s middle name is the same – John – so that’s for a boy.
John is a strong ‘family name’ on my side – my brother, cousin, father, grandfather and great grandfather all had it as a middle name.
And his mother’s first name, and my mother’s middle name is the same – Margaret – so that’s it for a girl!
We’re in trouble if we get two girls or two boys though, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it…
This is not an exclusively Northeastern tradition. There are lots of naming traditions, of which naming a child after a couple is one. My grandmother was named Mary Douglas after her parents’ best friends, and in my teens I met another woman named Douglas (called Doug) after the same man. Further, every female on the maternal side for four generations now has been named Mary or Margaret. I’ve met a great number of couple mash-ups over the years, all females.
It may be creepy to you, but I wouldn’t dismiss it as being about ownership and expectations without more evidence.
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Fair enough point, Kaethe, in parts, although I already noted that there obviously is not a family tradition of such a naming pattern in the Spears family because I can read the names of the grandparents online. People name their kids after others in their family and friendship circle all the time – my own name derives from my dad’s favourite uncle, and my middle name is my grandmother’s. Also, people can decide names based on someone else’s naming tradition that they like, and why not?
However, names carry weight, and much of it is unconscious weight, or at least unacknowledged. Whether the family is conscious of this or not, giving someone the first name of someone still living, especially someone who shares the same house (and differentiating nicknames not withstanding), is saddling them with navigating through extra challenges to finding their own individuality. Also, just because people aren’t conscious of feelings of ownership when naming a child after themselves doesn’t mean that such a motivation isn’t there. Children must feel that certain names carry certain expectations, and feel the weight of those expectations. A parent’s lovely nod to tradition can be a child’s crushing burden, and that is especially likely when the name belongs to someone whom the child lives with.
Mind you, I know I’m off on the tail end of the distribution with naming in many ways – I’ve told my kids for years that although we chose their names because we liked them, that we won’t be at all offended if they change their names by deed poll to something they like better when they are adults (the hyphenated surname particularly could be a pain). I’m sure it would take me a while to get used to, but I have absolutely no objection to them making such a decision. I know other people feel differently and would strenuously object to their kids changing their given names (not necessarily you, Kaethe).
P.S. Tangent: thankfully amongst all the other Roman traditions that the new Republicans adopted after the American Revolution they chose not to perpetuate the tradition of calling all daughters just a feminised version of the father’s surname with a number or nickname attached (Julia Secunda, Aemilia Tertulla, Camilla Flavia etc).
I’m at the tail end of the distribution with you. We spent a lot of time thinking what to name the kids, and thinking not about what names “mean” according to dead languages, but about what they evoke now, and blah, blah, blah. And I think I’ve made it clear to them both that they can change their names if they like, such that we make the effort to call the kindergardner whatever appeals to her (WolfOwl at the moment).
Because we’ve been deliberate and thoughtful in choosing what traditions to honor, what to throw away, and what to steal from others, I’m just more sensitive to the “but it wasn’t their tradition” argument. Arguably, the Southern tradition is that every name has a story attached to it, and they’re all long.
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WolfOwl is the most frabjous name evah!
I concede your point about thoughtfully choosing from amongst the traditions that surround us.
I admit to a prejudice that this particular family does not appear to be particularly thoughtful or introspective, and that Lynne Spears especially appears more than a little narcissistic in the way she has managed her daughters’ careers, so I guess discovering the origin of Jamie Lynn’s name confirmed that prejudice for me. Since my prejudice arises from notoriously shallow celebrity journalism, that’s not the most solid ground on which to form an opinion.
You like that, huh? The elder daughter is currently going by Foxcelot.
The tendency to disapprove anything coming from Lynne Spears is strong in me, too. I’m just trying to train myself not to blame the mothers (in particular) for all that goes wrong.
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