your family is not a royal dynasty.
Here’s one thing that will never fail to make me chuckle when I see an occurrence of it: the use of a Roman ordinal as part of a name.
This seems to be a uniquely American thing, and it’s (thankfully) not all that common, but who came up with that particular idea? Is there any way to put “John P. Smithers, III” on a business card and not look just a little pretentious?
I understand the motivation behind the use–it’s supposed to fill the same function as the regnal ordinal for distinguishing between two people of the same name–but the problem is that the rest of the world uses it exclusively in the kings-and-queens-and-Popes context, so it sounds a bit pompous when some lawyer family from Poughkeepsie adopts the practice. In addition, the monarchical ordinal is used because regnal names are usually first names only, and the limited supply of those made the use of distinguishing ordinal suffix a necessity after the second king with the same first name.
The lawyer family from Poughkeepsie, on the other hand, consists of individuals who not only use their last name, but usually receive a first and middle name at birth, which means that there’s no need for ordinals if you don’t give all your kids the same first and middle name.
Am I missing something here? Is there a good and pressing reason to employ that particular affectation other than ego or pretentiousness? I mean, if you name your kid after yourself and stick a regnal ordinal onto his name because you want to feel like you’re building a dynasty, it should be clear to you that your offspring has a 50% increased chance of getting teased by his shift mates at Burger King sixteen years down the road.
May 8, 2008 at 8:40 pm
I had a friend who, when filling out his form for the senior yearbook in high school, put a Roman numeral “I” after his name on a lark.
They printed it that way.
May 8, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Um, no, not in America. Here, it just means you’re the Nth one in your family with that name. Seriously, no one at the Burger King will tease you over it. My borther-in-law is a 3rd and the most it ever elicits is ‘Oh, neat.’ Nobody really thinks anything much about it here. Now when you get beyond the 3rd generation, people might start looking askance.
May 8, 2008 at 9:13 pm
I worked with a fellow who was a junior and named his son after himself, and the son carried the tradition. 4 generations of Bills! He even had a photo of all four of them together, in his office.
I like the use of family names, but this is a little too “Mini-Me” if you get the idea. My cousin is a junior and he hated being called “Sammy” or any sort of diminutive.
May 8, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Hey, I lived for 4 years in Pookie, and how dare you… uh… speak the truth.
Yeah, it’s just a BIT pretentious for that little depression-on-hudson.
I knew a IV. The rest of his name was just as patrician, as was his chin and his floppy blond hair.
One of my best friends is a bona fide III, middle name and all. They distinguish with “Bill” (II) vs. “Will” (III).
-E the First
May 8, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Down here in Tejas when you get to III you can nickname him “Trey”. Probably better than Joe Bob III. I read recently that some computer systems don’t recognize “IV”
Norm in Texas
May 8, 2008 at 11:15 pm
It’s an American WASP tradition, as are the traditional nicknames associated with the numerals- “Skip” was a nickname for (whoever) the second, and “Trip” (or Trey, as Norm pointed out), for whoever the third.
Found most often in the South and in Northeastern social circles where grown women can still call themselves Muffy with a straight face. I went to prep school with a lot of these kids, No one got teased.
May 9, 2008 at 1:58 am
Muffy? Are you kidding me?
…
mental note for romantic novel: a female boxer called Muffy who likes eating squid and pie.
May 9, 2008 at 5:12 am
Hum. At school, I was always Barrett (ii), as my elder sibling was at the same place. Not that any bugger mentioned this to me, and I got roundly ridiculed for insisting that my first initial was “M”. First names for officers only, bowb!
So there’s an awful lot of Iing and IIing from the UK side of things - where it’s not pretention if you’ve got the right wood panelling. It’s traditional. Personally, I’m getting so sick of the whole load of tosh I’m seriously considering jetissionning the H- part of my name. Seems a bit fancy-pants for a pixel pusher.
May 9, 2008 at 7:36 am
We name our children for all sorts of reasons, none of which follow anything resembling logic. Why “Marko”? Why “William” when you know people will call them “Bill”?
I was named after my grandfather, who happened to name his first born son after himself. Had he not, I would still be Robert Allen, named after my grandfather. Just like some people name their kids after relatives. My first born was named after the state I grew up in. Her middle name comes from a holiday. Is that something she’ll be ashamed of and which will cause her to be relegated to Fry Cook when she enters the workforce?
Sincerely,
Robert Allen III who, quite frankly, doesn’t give a shit if anyone thinks my name is pretentious or not.
May 9, 2008 at 7:37 am
I agree with you Mark. People have a hard enough time believing my surname is in fact Hammer. I think adopting a numeral would push them over the edge.
May 9, 2008 at 8:22 am
I happen to be a “II” named after my grandfather. Pretentious? Of course, this Virginia boy doesn’t think so. It was just a case of my parents wishing to honor a good man.
It did give rise to a humorous family story. We were visiting our grandparents once and I insisted on climbing a tree, against repeated instructions to the contrary. My mother finally got my attention by using my full name (that’s how you know you’re REALLY in trouble), but that’s nothing to my grandfather’s reaction, since she left off the “II.” He said it’d been decades since he’d heard his name said quite that way.
May 9, 2008 at 9:15 am
If you have people with the same name in your family, you really do have to have some way to distinguish them one from another.
Although all of our children are named after relatives, we chose to use their middle names to fulfill the “heritage” function of naming, and reserve the first name to be uniquely theirs. This seemed a good balance to us.
But we still did not manage to escape the confusion caused by repetitive family names. It was entirely my fault: I married a man with the same first and last name as my own father. No, he is not related to the family except now through marriage. Our last name is extremely common, and the shared first name, “Bob,” has got to be somewhere near the top of the common-names list too.
Over the years we have had much conversational confusion. At one point, the confusion became so annoying that my husband suggested that he should just go by “junior” when talking to members of my family — a solution I was not willing to accept since he wasn’t a junior member of my family of origin, and since it using such a moniker would have severely increased the confusion from outsiders who already assumed, based on the names, that my blood relatives actually belonged to my husband rather than to me.
Frankly, I’d have welcomed a nice, honest Roman numeral to set the record straight. And if the rest of the world didn’t like it? So what? Europeans are always irritated with Americans over something or another. What’s in a name??
May 9, 2008 at 10:20 am
I should name at least one of my children (should I have any) Lincoln Mark and impress upon him the importance of using the new family name and continuing the legacy set before him.
And then we’ll get to see if it lasts up to Lincoln Mark VIII.
May 9, 2008 at 10:42 am
I’m a III as well. I was named after my grandfather, who came to America to make a better life for his family. Giving me the same name as my grandfather was a way of honoring him, and I continued the tradition (my son is a IV).
Besides, if I got saddled with it, damn straight my boy’s gotta live with it too…
May 9, 2008 at 11:11 am
Just as long as no one names their boy “Sue.”
May 9, 2008 at 11:18 am
I’m just gonna give my kids IPv6 addresses.
May 9, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Perlhaqr, you should give them SQL names, like little Bobby Tables has.
May 9, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I disagree. For my family, it’s about continuity. My Dad is “”, I’m a II, my son is a III. Neither of us “roman numerals” have ever been teased. A friend in high schools was a III–everyone called him “Trip”. Another was a IV, and everyone just called him by his name. Never heard anyone tease either one about it. It seems more common in the South, but I’ve seen it everywhere.
Aside from the fact that teasing someone about their name is pretty junior high school…
May 9, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I’m curious about the habit of lawyers adding “Esquire” after their names. From what I remember from perusing Emily Post, it’s a courtesy title you use when addressing formal correspondence, (Mr. John Doe IV, Esq.) but if memory serves, it’s not supposed to be used to refer to one’s self.
I suppose the ambulance chasers will never cease in their quest for respectability. “Lawyer” was too tradesmanlike, so they invented “Attorney At Law”, then Counselor, Barrister, Solicitor, etc. Tacking on Esq. just doesn’t distract one from noticing their giant penis-shaped heads, though.
You do know why they all wear neckties, right? It keeps the foreskin from sliding up over their ears…
May 9, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I’m the fourth and I fill in forms that way etc… because my father the third is a convicted felon.
May 9, 2008 at 9:24 pm
It’s a WASP thing. I went to high school and college with a load of Trips and IV’s. Hell, I went to school with a Missy Purdie, and two Buffys. No one said boo to them. Of course, one of the Buffy’s fathers was chairman of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
May 9, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I’m a III who really ought to be a IV, as my Grandpa had the same three names as his Great-Grandpa. My Dad went by “Jr” all his life even though my Mom pointed out he should really be “II” after his Dad died.
And yes, we’re from Georgia on my Dad’s side, at least since 1830 or so.
May 9, 2008 at 10:38 pm
P.s. Oh, to BilltheC., I think I detect a slight class envy, there. In my part of the country everybody was either white, and Anglo, (not Saxon so much) and protestant or West African Protestant. Both sides of my family ranged from quite poor, to upper middle through the years, but we kept up our onomastications.
(Sorta like Miss Florence King’s weird Grandma.)
May 11, 2008 at 9:20 am
Pretentious? ……….. Nah. I am what I am, and if it’s not popular, well BFD.
I WAS teased mercilessly in school. About my squinty eyes. And my lengthy nose. Nobody cared that I was “the Fourth”. I was just Jimmy. I was given a load of crap in the military, for my rural roots, thus the “jimbob” in jimbob86….. It’s a “Walton’s reference….. maybe you wouldn’t understand.
Royalty? Hardly, but I AM the the King of Me.
I’m thinking it is this: I come from a long line of Natural Born Smartasses. They were horsetraders, dirt farmers, mechanics, industrial arts teachers…….. therein lies the joke!
May 11, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Ordination is a long family tradition in my family (at least since 1723) makes keeping the geneology straight much easier. The esq. thing is a bit silly — it’s actually some type of title of lower nobility, at one time. Some more recent lawyers have taken to just putting JD at the end, at least in states where law schools grant JDs. Barrister is an old term, and not entirely appropriate in the US legal system — it is specifically English. I have not heard it used in the US. IMO, I think many of the titles are silly, unless they actually still mean something to you/those around you (such as going by “Doctor X” is a useful way to make sure that, in an emergency, you could be relied on to provide medical assistance — or, if you have a JD behind your name, that you can provide emergency legal advice — sadly, there is such a thing in our society — mostly just various ways of saying “no comment”