MIDDLE NAME PRIDE DAY
Categories: Family & Friends & Culture & Art
Location: United States
Type of Event: Daily Event
Updated: May 06, 2024
Location: United States
Type of Event: Daily Event
Updated: May 06, 2024
About Middle Name Pride Day
This event is celebrated by telling three people who don't know what your middle name is and the story behind it.
Through the first 4,500 years of biblical human history, surnames rarely existed and people operated on a first name basis. Surnames didn’t occur with frequency in western society until the 10th Century AD or become accepted until the eleventh. Exceptions occur, generally within royalty and ruling parties, but most people were identified with their tribes, culture, city, job, position or influence: King David, Erik the Red, Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar, Socrates, Aesop, John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene. Then a person’s name qualified its bearer like a business card rather than today’s use of names, to identify like a serial number.
The first known use of a middle name appears to have occurred in Europe around the 14th Century. The use of middle names didn’t really take off until the 20th century and they are especially useful to people like myself with very common names (Laura Lewis…there are 10 Laura Lewis’ living within 5 miles of me in Los Angeles which is why I always use my middle name on legal documents and in work: Laura Dawn Lewis).
In the United States, upon marriage, individuals have the option of no longer using their middle name. This is why you will see a lot of people with two last names and no middle name. In other societies, generation after generation strings together surnames to trace the genealogy of their family. Often the wife’s last name becomes the children’s middle name.
A portion of the above is from the article THE ORIGINS OF BRIDAL NAME CHANGE Part II: Why Brides Change Last Names by Laura Dawn Lewis, September 2005
http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/origins-of-bridal-name-change
Through the first 4,500 years of biblical human history, surnames rarely existed and people operated on a first name basis. Surnames didn’t occur with frequency in western society until the 10th Century AD or become accepted until the eleventh. Exceptions occur, generally within royalty and ruling parties, but most people were identified with their tribes, culture, city, job, position or influence: King David, Erik the Red, Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar, Socrates, Aesop, John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene. Then a person’s name qualified its bearer like a business card rather than today’s use of names, to identify like a serial number.
The first known use of a middle name appears to have occurred in Europe around the 14th Century. The use of middle names didn’t really take off until the 20th century and they are especially useful to people like myself with very common names (Laura Lewis…there are 10 Laura Lewis’ living within 5 miles of me in Los Angeles which is why I always use my middle name on legal documents and in work: Laura Dawn Lewis).
In the United States, upon marriage, individuals have the option of no longer using their middle name. This is why you will see a lot of people with two last names and no middle name. In other societies, generation after generation strings together surnames to trace the genealogy of their family. Often the wife’s last name becomes the children’s middle name.
A portion of the above is from the article THE ORIGINS OF BRIDAL NAME CHANGE Part II: Why Brides Change Last Names by Laura Dawn Lewis, September 2005
http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/origins-of-bridal-name-change
PROMOTIONAL DETAILS
Event Sponsor:
Celebrate Your Name Week
