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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Heb66 on Thursday 10 September 20 14:22 BST (UK)

Title: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: Heb66 on Thursday 10 September 20 14:22 BST (UK)
Hi,
I am struggling to find the correct approach in searching the GRO index and 1939 register for a doubled barrelled surname...just for example Me(a)yers-Mahon.
Am I just adding Mahon to the surname search or the whole double barrell ?
Not being able to search specifically is driving me bonkers !!
Any advice greatly appreciated
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: stanmapstone on Thursday 10 September 20 14:28 BST (UK)
I don't know if this will help searching FreeBMD https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search-names.pl

Stan
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: KGarrad on Thursday 10 September 20 15:00 BST (UK)
Maybe the double-barrelled surname came along later?

Who are you looking for?
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: Galium on Thursday 10 September 20 16:40 BST (UK)
I would try all possibilities, but it's sometimes the case that the original name is eg. John Smith Jones, where Smith is one of the forenames, and it is only later in life that he decides to become John Smith-Jones.
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: ThrelfallYorky on Thursday 10 September 20 17:39 BST (UK)
I'd try under Smith, and under Jones, and try SmithJones....
Double-barrelled surnames are something my lot rarely had, and those few were "acquired" to cound more posh, I assume.
(When I was teaching, we always guessed if the children on the Admissions list with DB surnames were posh, or simply that their parents never married.)
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: Heb66 on Thursday 10 September 20 18:08 BST (UK)
Hi,
Thank you for all your suggestions...looking for Reginald Ma(e)yer(s) - Mahon born after 1917 has links to Warwickshire , occupation as far as I know was a V.I.P driver for the red cross and the ambulances during the war.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: [Ray] on Thursday 10 September 20 18:42 BST (UK)
Hi

Can you give us an example of exactly where you have found him.     


Thanks     

Ray

Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: Heb66 on Thursday 10 September 20 19:52 BST (UK)
Hi,
We have no paper trail of him at all.
A friends grand-mother born 1917 < long since passed away > had a friendship with him when they drove ambulances together in the war, she met him whilst living in Warwickshire, but he has Irish links.
He was apparently younger than her and then my friends mother was born in 1946 !!
Currently waiting DNA test results from my friends mum.
That's all we really know as the grand-mother wouldn't discuss the situation very much when asked.

Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: Treetotal on Thursday 10 September 20 22:56 BST (UK)
I have a  double barrelled Familly line and when searching I put the first part of the Surname in the Christian name box as a middle name.
Caroll
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: Andrew Tarr on Thursday 10 September 20 23:10 BST (UK)
(When I was teaching, we always guessed if the children on the Admissions list with DB surnames were posh, or simply that their parents never married.)

Just as an aside, it seems that these days d-b 'surnames' are becoming commoner - in both senses of that word.  The working class has usually made-do with just a single forename, while those they 'look up to' often had two, and the upper classes may have had more.  Of course the early Victorians started a vogue for using ancestors' surnames as middle names, and perhaps a hyphen got inserted later ?
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: Skoosh on Friday 11 September 20 09:03 BST (UK)
Real Scottish toffs generally did not use a hyphen, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, in particular, dismissed it as a southern affectation!  ;D

Skoosh.
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: Zaphod99 on Friday 11 September 20 10:08 BST (UK)
This made me smile. My very nice neighbour with a d-b name, Eton educated, would be surprised if I told him that just 3 generations back his Guards Regiment ancestor just added his mother's maiden name to his surname. Shoild I tell him?

Zaph
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: JohninSussex on Friday 11 September 20 15:52 BST (UK)
Real Scottish toffs generally did not use a hyphen, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, in particular, dismissed it as a southern affectation!  ;D

Skoosh.

That distinction never occurred to me, thank you.
The Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes family use a hyphen (well more than one obviously) ;
as do the Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.  But the Montagu Douglas Scott family don't.
The Rees-Mogg hypertoffs father son and daughter are hyphenated but Iain Duncan Smith isn't.

So I think that demonstrates the theory quite well: no hyphens are worn with the kilt.  Probably isn't universal though.
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: Zaphod99 on Tuesday 10 November 20 11:55 GMT (UK)
Just recently I read about a couple with the surnames Christmas and White getting married and using the double barreled name White-Christmas. It's a true story, it was widely reported a couple of weeks ago.

Zaph
Title: Re: Double barrelled surnames
Post by: brigidmac on Tuesday 10 November 20 13:28 GMT (UK)
Stan
Personally  I found the fbmd link you gave really hard to make head or tail of
Is the answer to use square brackets instead of hyphens for double barrellec naes ?

Tree
Putting one of the names in first name section would work particularly well for scottish heritage where the first name tradition s
Often include grandparents surname