Double Names

I have found myself highly perplexed the last year or two over something I had never considered as even being a problem before. The issue: double names. That is, people who have double names and the burden that they carry around because of it.

Silly, you say. Well, I would have agreed with you before I ran into a double named lady up in Vinings one Saturday. It was then that I realized that some people have been branded for life with a double or hyphenated name and that this labels them a certain way. At least it did in the mind of the lady I am referring to. And, this can cause a lot of explaining to be necessary when introducing one’s self to someone else. Nonsense, you say.

Well, when I met this lady I asked her what her name was and she hesitated. “You may laugh when I tell you my name,” she said. “I have double name. I am from South Georgia.”

That response, in itself, required more conversation as I needed to know what she called “South Georgia”. Having grown up in and around Macon, Central Georgia, I knew that people are not always precise in referring to North Georgia and South Georgia. When she said Hazlehurst and added, “You probably never heard of it,” I knew she was, indeed, from South Georgia. Anywhere below the gnat line qualifies in my book.

I replied to her that double names were not new to me, at all. I grew up in Georgia and had friends and relatives and acquaintances with double names and I had never given it a second thought. Until now, that is. My granddaughter, Mary Claire, has no idea of the problem she faces.

Mary Lou, Lilly Belle, Mattie Clyde, Georgia Belle, Norma Jo, Lida Jo, Mary Anne, Minnie Lee, Mary Margaret, Mary Catherine, Betty June, Ida Mae, Betty Jo, Emma Lou, Billie Jean, and Betty Lynn are just a few of the names that I grew up around. No doubt I am forgetting at least that many more. So, I never saw double names as unusual or problematic. At least, not until I met the double name lady down in Vinings, who, by all accounts seemed otherwise very normal and certainly a very nice person.

I can see some problems. Take Marianne. Now that sounds like a double name but is actually only one. So, Marianne’s everywhere are probably having to say, “My name is Marianne and that is one word. Not Mary Ann.” The same with Imogene. Not Emma Jean. Then there is the situation with hyphens. “My name is Marla-Deen, with a hyphen.” More stress to deal with.

So, why am I bringing this up now? Good question.
I had about put this drama behind me until I picked up a June/July issue of Garden & Gun magazine. A one named writer, who has never had to deal with the double name stuff, named Julia Reed has an article called The Name Game. There she goes into Southern names and dares to use the word proclivity in discussing double names. Now, that is a brazen approach!

Imagine you are in New York and trying to impress the haughty tautey folks as to your sophisticated nature and back ground. Maybe trying to make them think you are from Atlanta or the Buckhead area and not Cordele. Then they ask your name and you say Mary Lou and they go “Aha! We knew it! You are from South Georgia!”

All this stuff came rushing back at me and I will now lie awake nights worrying about my granddaughter having to go through life with a double name. And, one that sounds a lot like a magazine. And worrying about all the other Southern women afflicted in this manner. Although Betty June was born in Pennsylvania.

One of my grandsons is named John Patrick and his mother thought he would be called that double name although I warned her that he would likely be “J.P.” That will never happen, she thought. But, J.P. it is.

But, you could be a boy named Sue. Or, Heaven forbid, Jerome. How about Bubba, Buddy-Ro, or Cuz. All of those are not a double names or a hyphenated one but fraught with possible problems.
But my grandfather used to say, “In the end, all you have is your good name.” He could have added, “even if it is a double name.”

© 06/06/2018 JC