The Purpose of Middle Names

As societies became more urbanized and bureaucratic, middle names became more than symbols of faith or prestige: They increasingly became practical necessities. The Industrial Revolution brought about unprecedented population growth in cities, and situations began to arise in which multiple people shared identical first and last names. Middle names therefore provided an additional layer of identification that helped distinguish between people in official records and legal documents such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, and property deeds. This practical importance reinforced the cultural expectation that children should receive a middle name at birth.

But that’s not to say middle names lost their former function. While they certainly help with administrative systems — and likely became commonplace to a certain extent due to this practicality — having a middle name was never so important that it became a legal requirement. To this day, middle names are primarily used for the same reason as back in the 13th century: as a way to honor someone, be it a godparent, relative, best friend, favorite pop star, or any other name that holds a certain significance. 

In many other cases, parents choose a middle name for their child just because it sounds nice — and thanks to the middle name’s general anonymity, it presents an opportunity for parents to get creative, choosing a colorful moniker they wouldn’t necessarily be happy with as their child’s first and primary name. 

“Planting the Ivy” Was a Tradition at Many Colleges

The ivy-covered buildings on a college campus have come to signify tradition, longevity, and prestige. This symbolism dates back to a 19th-century university ritual called “planting the ivy,” an annual ceremony in which graduating seniors would plant ivy on campus, usually near a wall or building, and commemorate the event with a decorated stone engraved with their graduation year. Planting the evergreen vine, which has long symbolized everlasting life, devotion, fidelity, and loyalty, was often a traditional part of Class Day, the day before commencement, when the senior class would celebrate the completion of their courses with festivities, speeches, and the presentation of awards. At Harvard University, the ceremonial planting of the ivy dates back to at least 1850, though the celebration of Class Day is even older.

Some schools designated a specific day as Ivy Day, which was a more sentimental occasion than Class Day. In 1873, on the first Ivy Day at the University of Pennsylvania, an ivy twig was imported from Scotland and an invocation was made at the planting: “Having been nurtured this far in its development, it is now able to take roots for itself and grow greater and greater through the years.” While planting ivy isn’t a tradition exclusive to Ivy League colleges, the association, and all it represents, endures. Today, Ivy Day is the day when all eight Ivy League schools release their regular admission decisions.

A Sports Writer Coined the Term “Ivy Colleges”

Football probably isn’t the first thing most people think about when they hear the term “Ivy League,” but that is where the term originated. On October 14, 1933, New York Herald Tribune sports writer Stanley Woodward used the term “ivy colleges” when reporting on upcoming football games between several Northeastern colleges and their opponents. “A proportion of our eastern ivy colleges are meeting little fellows another Saturday before plunging into the strife and turmoil,” he wrote.

Associated Press sports writer Alan Gould is attributed with the first article referencing the “Ivy League,” writing on February 7, 1935, “The so-called ‘Ivy League’ which is in the process of formation among a group of the older eastern universities seems to have welcomed Brown into the fold and automatically assumed the proportions of a ‘big eight.’” While Gould may have been the first to use the term in print, the traditionally recognized Ivy League schools, as well as a few others, had competed against each other in football games since the 1870s. At times, the prestigious military academies, the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, were also included in discussions of the Ivy League, both athletically and academically.  

The “Ivy League” Began as a Collegiate Athletic Conference

An informal football league was established in 1945 when the presidents of the eight Northeastern universities signed the Ivy Group Agreement. The schools already had a long history of competing against each other in sports — the first Harvard-Yale football game took place in 1875 (Harvard won 4-0) — but the agreement regulated athletic team standards, including academic expectations and eligibility requirements, such as a ban on athletic scholarships. The NCAA Division I athletic conference officially known as the Ivy League was established in 1954 when the Ivy Group Agreement was extended to all intercollegiate sports. Despite the relationship to sports, however, the name “Ivy League” endures as a shorthand reference for a certain type of college education — one associated with highly competitive admissions, academic excellence, and all of the privilege and power that can come out of an elite education.

Middle English Translation

Below is the same article written in Middle English. For this translation, we referenced the University of Michigan’s Middle English Dictionary, Harvard’s translation of “The Canterbury Tales,” the 14th-century Wycliffe Bible, and various AI tools including Claude Sonnet, ChatGPT, and OpenL. We omitted special characters such as ī, ǒ, ā, ē̆, and obsolete letters such as þ (thorn) and ƿ (wynn), using the modern English alphabet instead. It’s also worth noting that many words in Middle English had multiple spellings, so there is more than one possible translation.

Whanne William of Normandi iyede Engelond in the yeer of oure Lord a thousand and six and sixti, it bigan a gret chaunge of the Olde Englissh langage. The Norman conquerours becomen the Anglo-Saxon lordes, and bringen with hem here Anglo-Norman langage, which camen of Olde Frenssh. Over tyme, the two langages blenden. Olde Englissh gramere was moore simple, and the Englissh wordes expanden with the addicioun of Frenssh wordes. Thereof cam a newe tyme of the Englissh langage: Middel Englissh, spoken betwixe the yeer of oure Lord a thousand an hundred and the yeer a thousand an five hundred.

During this tyme, Geffrey Chaucer wroot The Tales of Caunterbury, oon of the moost famous ensamples of Middel Englissh litterature. Chaucer's writyng — and the Englissh langage in generale — was nat uniforme at this tyme. Spellinges varied and were often writen after the soun, and pronunciacioun varied by regioun; Chaucer often used which-ever versioun of a word fitte his rime.

Ther were som differences betwixe the Middel Englissh alphabete and oure Modern Englissh alphabete. Middel Englissh includid lettres swich “þ” (icleped thorn) for the “th” soun, and som lettres — swich “u” and “v” or “i” and “j” — were bothe used. Ther were also som commun wordes we speketh nomore. Middel Englissh used “thou” for informal speche and “ye” as a formal or plurel forme, bothe of which were chaunged to “you.” And thrid-persoun verbes endden in “eth” or “th” (swich “goeth”), which bicometh “s.” During the Gret Vouel Shiften, that fel bitwixe the yeer of oure Lord a thousand thre hundred and fifti and a thousand six hundred, the pronunciacioun of mani wordes also chaunged. For ensample, in Middel Englissh, “sheep” wolde soun moore lyk “shape,” and “bite” wolde soun lyk “beet.”

Another gret shiften fallen whanne the prentyng presse camen to Engelond in the yeer of oure Lord a thousand foure hundred six and seventi, bringing the biginning of a newe tyme of the langage, icleped Modern Englissh. As prented bookes bicom moore brod-spred, spelling and gramere bicometh moore stedefast, and Englissh bigan to take his present forme.

As so often happens in English, the modern word is a blend of various influences and threads that can be hard to extricate. But etymologists (those who study the origin of words) note that in post-classical Latin, historia sometimes became istoria, which in Old French became estoire or estorie, meaning “story, chronicle, history.” Of course, it makes sense that “history” and “story” would be linked, given that history is itself a kind of story — perhaps the ultimate story.

According to Merriam-Webster, the term “history” first showed up in English sometime before the 12th century, with the meaning “a chronicle of significant events.” At that point, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word was borrowing from both Latin and French.

The term “historian” came later — around the middle of the 15th century, likely from the medieval Latin word historianus. (Sadly, the Old English wyrd-writere, to mean “one who writes an account of events, a historian or historiographer,” never caught on.) 

Of course, the world had historians long before the modern term was in use. The Greek scholar Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century BCE, is often called the first historian. He’s thought to have been the first to collect historical materials in a systematic and investigative way, to vet their accuracy, and to construct them into a narrative (or a historia). 

The Histories (or Historíai in Greek), Herodotus’ lengthy account of the rise of the Persian Empire and the Greco-Persian Wars, is the work that made his reputation. Yet his legacy is controversial: Herodotus is called the “father of history” as well as the “father of lies,” a duality that points to the difficulties of reconstructing the past and the more problematic ways that history can be a story. But it’s worth remembering that whatever the challenges, the root of the term goes back to one of the most fundamental human impulses: the desire to know.

Surnames Can Tell Us About Our Ancestors’ Occupations

For many people in the United States, surnames hold clues to their ancestors’ European origins as well as their occupations. Names such as Baker, Miller, Sawyer, and Smith each tell a story about the jobs that were once an important part of a community. The last name Baker refers, of course, to someone whose occupation was baking, while the name Miller, from the Middle English “mille,” references a person who owned or worked in a grain mill. The name Sawyer comes from the Old English “sagu,” referring to one who saws wood and signifying a family whose profession was in lumber or woodworking. Similarly, the name Smith is derived from the Old English word “smitan,” meaning “to smite” or “strike,” indicating someone who worked with metal, such as a blacksmith or goldsmith. Other common examples include Taylor, Fisher, Wright (as in wheelwright), Cooper (barrel maker), Hunter, Thatcher, Brewer, Cook, Glover, Shepherd, and Gardner. 

Occupational names are common in languages other than English, too, such as Geiger, a German surname meaning “fiddle player”; Notaro, an Italian occupational name meaning “clerk”; Fisker, a Dutch surname meaning “fisherman”; Patel, an Indian surname meaning “landowner”; and Favre, a French surname meaning “blacksmith.” The surnames Müeller (German), Mulder (Dutch) and Melnik (Russian), and Molinero (Spanish), are all equivalent to the English last name Miller. 

As societies evolved, these occupational surnames stuck, even as descendants of those original bakers or smiths moved into different lines of work. Their names remain a connection to their ancestors and the roles they played in their communities. 

Surnames Can Reflect Our Ethnic Heritage

Beyond occupations, surnames can also be tied to geography. In many cultures, last names were derived from a family’s place of origin. For instance, English surnames such as Hill, from the Old English “hyll,” and Wood, for the Old English “wudu,” refer to natural landmarks, while the Italian surname Carrara is derived from the Latin word for “quarry” and comes from the name of a city in Tuscany known for its marble quarries. In Spanish-speaking cultures, common names include Fernández, meaning “son of Fernando,” and Lopez, meaning “son of Lope,” emphasizing a patronymic naming tradition similar to that of the Vikings. 

Some other common Spanish names meaning “son of-” include Perez, “son of Pedro,” Alvarez, “son of Alvaro,” Sanchez, “son of Sancho,” and Diaz, “son of Diego,” while Spanish geographical names include Rivera from the Spanish word ribera, meaning “bank” or “shore,” and Vargas, from the Spanish and Portuguese word varga, meaning “flooded field,” “pastureland,” or “slope.” 

In Asia, surnames carry rich historical significance as well. The most common surname in China, as well as the world, is Wang, meaning “king” or “monarch,” while Li was the surname of Chinese emperors of the Tang dynasty. The most common surname in Japan is Satō and, like other popular surnames such as Itō and Katō, it is linked to the powerful Fujiwara clan that controlled the Japanese government for four centuries.

African surnames originated through a mix of Indigenous traditions and external influences, including colonization, religion, and migration. In West Africa, surnames often indicate the ethnic group or clan a person belongs to, such as Diop, a surname that comes from the Diop clan of the Wolof people of Senegal. The influence of Islam and the Arabic language is reflected in the surnames of North Africa. The most common surname in Egypt, for instance, is Mohamed, which is associated with the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, while the Sudanese surname Elmalik means “the king” or “the owner” in Arabic.

There Are More Than 6 Million Different Surnames in the U.S.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 6.3 million different surnames were reported in the 2010 census. Centuries of immigration and forced migration from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as the existing Indigenous populations, contributed to making the United States home to one of the most diverse arrays of surnames in the world. As people from different countries settled in America, they brought their surnames with them, often adapting, abbreviating, or anglicizing them over time to make them easier for English speakers to pronounce or to avoid discrimination. While many of us today may be far removed from the origins of our surnames, they still connect us to our past.