Lesley,
You're welcome. While there were children who were christened with a middle name,
many/most were not and it's confusing to a lot of people to go looking for
certificates using a middle name their ancestor used and not finding matching entries.
People rarely knew the middle name was 'adopted' and often refuse to believe it!
I think, in a small village in Wales, the use of a person's occupation or home when
referring to someone with a common name (i.e., "Elwyn the Milk", "Humphreys
Smith", "Dave Chip", "Evans the Goitre" or "Morgan The
Goat" as in the film), was the easy way to differentiate contemporaries. Since we
don't name our homes in the U.S. nor associate the occupation as part of a
person's name, many Welsh people found it necessary to adopt a middle name and middle
names were much more common;y given to children in the U.S. in those days so the Welsh
would feel they were lacking something that perhaps would make them feel more like he
belonged.
My Thomas Thomas who emigrated to the U.S. in 1885 apparently 'adopted' the middle
name of "Arthur", although he signed himself "Thomas A. Thomas" most
of the time. Having researched the family and found no evidence of any prior Arthur
(forename or surname) in the family, I'm left wondering why he chose it. Perhaps a
romantic nod to the legend of "King Arthur" or something much simpler, like a
best mate from his days working for the M&M Railway Line, as a claims clerk in
Lampeter, CGN. (He gave his firstborn son the middle name of "Porter" -- a
railway occupation!)
(By the way, hope you noticed the posting from our new lister, Anthony Hunt, specifically
looking for you!)
Regards,
Julie Preston
juliefpreston(a)sbcglobal.net
----- Original Message -----
From: Lesley
To: POWYS-L(a)rootsweb.com
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 6:33 AM
Subject: [POWYS] Adopted Middle Name (was GREAT- GRANDFATHER SEARCH)
Hi Julie
My great grandfather seems to have a middle name and I was told it was
adopted. Personally, I wondered if it was the same person or if a mistake
had been made. He came from sparsly populated mid Wales by Llandrindod
Wells and moved to south wales and became a miner so there was obviously
loads of William Evans there!! Thank you Julie for mentioning this.
Lesley
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