Double barrelled names

Question

I've looked through previous questions and I'm still none the wiser. I have Hilda Bernhard Smith, the profile was created by someone else and I didn't have all the records then.

All her siblings and father are somebody Bernhard Smith (no hyphen). Her baptism shows it hyphenated. Should this be a two word surname or middle name/surname.

It looks like she's not hyphenated on the GRO index, and only 2 of her siblings seem to be hyphenated there.

There seem to be several Bernhard (middle name) Smiths, and only one surname Bernhard-Smith profiles. I think this could be a nightmare for future duplicates.

Comments

The other hyphenated profile appears to be her sister. And just to confuse things, she's not one of the ones with a hyphenated GRO record.

Births Dec 1874
Smith	Gwendolen		St. Geo. H. Sq.	1a	371

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bernhard-Smith-1

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I have found the GRO to mostly ignore hyphenated names, just as accented letters are ignored.

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Morning! I have been working on a double barrelled last name and have chosen to hypenate it. Mainly because it shows that the whole thing is a last name. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Rought-Rought-1 have a look at this one and read the first paragraph under Research Notes - it doesn't get much more confusing.

Wendy 

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Ha ha! I must be lucky that mine wasn't Smith-Smith!

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In some countries compound surnames are the norm. The entire compound surname goes in the surname field.

English speaking countries, Americans in particular (BTW: I am American), seem to get rather confused about compound surnames. If there is no hyphen, which is usually correct, the name can get turned into a middle name, last name situation. The solution being to incorrectly add the hyphen.

For people immigrating from Latin American countries to the US, the second, or maternal, surname sometimes gets moved to the middle name position.

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Amazing but true. The combo's can be tricky. Bernard-Smith does sound good. The Brit's use double barrelled names all the time, so I don't feel bad about putting a hyphen in the middle of the last name. Defines it very well & I did see the name hyphenated in a census I was looking at.

Wendy 

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George, English speaking ? American ?, sorry, I could not resist.

All English 'double barreled' surnames should be correctly hyphenated. Just as all surnames and proper nouns should start with a capital letter, another detail that those on the internet overlook.

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Maybe I should have just said American ….

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Tim - I totally agree with you about the hyphen in the middle of a double barreled name, just takes the guess work out of the entire situation. And there is always the possibility of the mother's maiden name being used as a middle name, as in the "Best Answer" where Shaw did turn out to be a middle name as on most records.

My hubby brought up an interesting point - what if two hyphenated named people got married? As in Bernard-Smith married Rought-Rought?

Couldn't resist.....LOL.....and I am Canadian

Wendy

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Wikipedia has a nice article that discusses compound names in a number of countries. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barrelled_name

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Wendy, your hubby's question - yes, it does happen. I think the practice may have become into use by issue of a second, or third marriage, wishing to distinguish themselves from their half-siblings, showing that they had a different mother, or father. This would have been important to the serious genealogist, the genetics being different.

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One of our local landowners, has  one surname used as a given name (Grosvenor) plus a quadruple barrelled surname Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax

Every so often the family runs out of male heirs. They  let a daughter inherit and her husband and offspring take some of  the family names. There have been many permutations over the years ( note wikipedia isn't consistent as to which parts of the names are hypenated.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charborough_House

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Thank you to everyone who read the ongoing conversation. I still think for convenience sake that double barreled names should be hyphenated. Would it be a good idea to go to the England Project and ask about the hyphen/non hyphen in the double barreled names?

Answer 1

If you're sure that something is a surname and not a middle name, that is to say the two names are in the surname field, I say add it as a surname.

I had a similar problem with what I originally thought was a surname "Shaw Ledger", but "Shaw" actually turned out to be a middle name on most records.

Hope that helps.

Comments

I think I'll go with Bernhard-Smith. That's how it's written in the parish registers if not the GRO index.

Answer 2

My gut answer to this was to put the hyphen in. But in searchability terms, I am now not sure that it is the right answer. Can a further indicator that the two last names is correct.be add to the edit page? Only use the hyphen if you are absolutely sure it was used at all times. Or some way of ensuring that if there are two names in the last names entered that the "certain" button is pressed. This should stop the Gedcom transfers from making this error.

Comments

It seems to work OK for searches. Gwendolen Bernhard-Smith only has the hyphenate name but comes up in searches for Gwendolen Smith and Gwendolen Bernhard (first names) Smith. I put Smith as an alternative name for Hilda but it's probably not necessary.

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That's interesting was that searching within Wikitree or using other sources? Familysearch seems to have got to grips with its search capabilities. Wikitree I find more awkward  Thats not a criticism the reason Wikitree stays the tree of choice is because of  its need to work in the profiles not just dump them with no consequences

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Within Wikitree.

I'm afraid I still have terrible trouble finding anything on FS, I usually find something on Ancestry or Findmypast first just to give me a clue!