I'm new to the list and so haven't got a complete background on this topic as discussed, but it is one I've been interested in for a long time. My mother was named Mary Irving Johnstone THOMSON. She hated her name with "all those family names" until I found out that Mary Irving was the name of a great great grandmother of hers. She already knew that the "Johnstone" was her own mother's surname. She then became quite taken with the idea that she was a living link to 200 years of family history. Indeed her mother had her mother's surname as a middle name, Mary Crawford JOHNSTONE, as did an uncle, Hugh Crawford JOHNSTONE. On my paternal side, I have come across examples of unmarried women naming their child after the father. If the child was a boy, he was sometimes given the full name of the father plus the surname of the mother. For example, John Gleaves DEASINGTON was born in 1875 in Wolstanton, Staffordshire. The marriage of John GLEAVES and Mary Ann DEASINGTON was in 1876 in Wolstanton. ..... Jack Leigh Surname interests (18th & 19th centuries) in Dumfries & Galloway. Many of these families later moved to Carlisle, and/or Whitehaven, and/or Wigton in Cumberland, England. Annan - HEWITT, IRVING, JOHNSTONE, KIRK, SHORTT, SIVEWRIGHT, THOMSON Penninghame - CRAWFORD Sorbie - WYLIE, McKNIGHT (my son-in-law's family) Castle Douglas - JOHNSTONE Langholm - DALGLEISH