names

[auracariafan]

is there a term for people who have a first name as a surname? eg lucy carol, tony neil etc? look forward to hearing from you

[Quizmonster]

I don't know about a specific term for this situation, but it is almost certain that the first name derived form the surname originally. For example, 'Lindsay' came from the Old English for 'Lincoln's wetland' and that was probably applied to someone who actually lived in such a place. Thus he was distinguished from someone else called 'Moor' because he lived outside the village and on the edge of the surrounding moorland. Lindsay became a common surname in Scotland, but we now find it as a first name for such people as Miss Lohan!
First names were very limited in the past and - even in living memory - a fisherman in north-east Scotland might be called 'Jeems's Willum' (James's William) to distinguish him from 'Jock's Willum' (John's William.)
Nowadays, anything and everything seems to be available as a first name!

[Quizmonster]

Before the genealogy brigade descend upon me like a ton of bricks, I should add that I got the derivation of 'Lindsay' from a names website! It may well mean something else entirely. Wherever it came from, it was a surname before it ever became a first name.

[dundurn]

There was, and to some extent still is a practice in Scotland of a son (usually the eldest) being given his Mother's maiden name as a middle name. There was no attempt to turn it into a double-barrelled surname but he was often referred to by the middle name as if his given forename didn't exist. I knew a Bob Davidson who was never called anything else but Miller by his mother, that having been her maiden name. Another friend was James Hayworth Donaldson and was known by everyone as Hayworth until he rebelled in his mid-twenties and became plain Jimmy. This could have been a mechanism whereby Scots (at least) surnames changed into forenames. I can think of Bruce, Grant, Craig, Douglas, Forbes, Farquhar, Fraser and Graham for starters.

[Narolines]

H'mmm.....my first name is one of those Scots surnames mentioned by dundurn, and my middle and last names can be encountered as either surname or forename, though my middle one is Middle Eastern in origin and was originally a given name (as opposed to an inherited one - ie what we would now call a forename) and my last name is of Norman French origin and is an occupational surname now often used as a forename. I'm confused.........