Geneology, why would some one do this?

Question

My great great grandparents were -

John Matthews and

Susan Kyles

that is their names on their brith certificates, but when they married John matthews put his name as John Smith (after his mothers madien name) and susan kyles put her name as susan landled (after her mothers madien name)

they had 6 children, the first three, all their last names were smith but the other 3 were called smith-matthews

HUH????

Answer 1

http://home.clara.net/dixons/Certificate...

or

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/wales.h...

maybe useful.

Also consider the fact that sometimes a surname is about to die out in a family and is added in to prevent it's loss.

A god parents name can be added as a middle name.

In single mothers the child is sometimes given the fathers name.

In wills too sometimes a bequest is left on the grounds that the name ------ is adopted.

Answer 2

Only a guess, but many cultures honor their mothers by carrying mother's maiden names (even one of my brothers has our mother's maiden name as his middle name).

Since laws were not enacted/enforced/whatever back then, people could change their names at will.  Sounds as though they were simply honoring their mothers.

And I have ancestors from Cardiff...

Answer 3

It is very hard to speculate without more information.  Some people did this to avoid persecution by association.  What time period/country was this?  

Perhaps whatever association they were avoiding (were they hiding from something/someone for safety/ethical/principles reasons?) was no longer a perceived threat by the time the other children were born.  The world was a small place not too far back in history, and there may have been good reason.  Learning the historical context in the area may be of help.

Answer 4

i know,,, theres no understanding why some certificates come back with the names on them that they have. I also have ancestors, some of their children they registered, some they didnt, some had double barrelled names, some didnt, some had the mothers maiden name, some didnt, its a real mystery and makes searching for them really difficult.

double check, and then double check again, that you have the right birth certs and marriage certs for the people, as mathews is a common name and smith, obviously

Answer 5

Sometimes, people do strange things that make no sense to others later, but yet to them, made absolute sense at the time!  

Why should they hide their true identity?  Probably, because someone was looking for them!  If so, the question is who?  Of course, there could be something dark and shady here.  On the other hand, they could just have eloped, and wished at the time, to conceal their whereabouts, etc.  It would be interesting to know how old they were when they married!

One thing you can take comfort from though, is this: they stayed together and had 6 children!  So the commitment they made to one another when they married, would seem to have taken root!

Answer 6

Sometimes it might depend on how the clerk recording the information did the name.   The family might have used the double surname, Smith-Matthews, but the person who recorded the birth information put his information in using only his father's surname and the person recording the marriage information put in the mother's maiden name.  Often times it depends on how the clerk understood.

Also, you have to understand how double surnames are used.

Usually in English speaking countries it is the mother's maiden name followed by the father's surname or you might say the wife's maiden name followed by the husband's surname.

In Hispanic countries it is different.  

The husband's name is his father's surname followed by his mother's maiden name.'

The wife and chldren's name is their husband and father's patronymic surname followed by the wife' and mother's maiden name.

Until the daughter gets married

She drops her mother's maiden name, pushes her father's surname to the right and put her husband's surname in front.  

So, the clerk recording the information on the marriage certificate would have assumed that if he said his name was Smith-Matthews that Smith was actually the family (father's surname) name if he came from a Hispanic culture.

Answer 7

your grandparents may have been criminals using aliases, you never know