1.3 Structure of a compound given name.   My own ancestral pedigree includes a pair of twins with the names in (1) and (2).

It appears that their first given names were taken from the given names and surnames of certain respected men of renown: President George Washington (1732-1799), President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), General Francis Marion (1732-1795), President Martin Van Buren (1782-1862). To describe the multiplicity of name sets in such names we need rules like [PS3], [PS4], and [PS5]. The Kleene star in [PS3] allows a person to have multiple given names, say the names of two different notables. The compound given name in [PS5] describes the use of that notable person’s first and last names together.

It is anticipated that the connector in these rules will also describe the French custom which places a hyphen between the compound elements of a given name.

One thing in the structural description given in the figure that the rules describe is the case where a name that is a surname in form, i.e., belongs to the class of surnames, may be used as a given name, as in (4).

In other words, a given name in use may manifest itself as having the form of either a given name or a surname. The culture seems to have two name pools from which the population selects names, one pool of given names, one of surnames. The given names are generally indicative of the sex of the individual having it. This may be expressed in a segment structure rule.

It is also clear that the given name and surname of the person for whom my relatives were named were kept intact. We may also describe this fact in a rule of subclassification that relates to the non-terminal given name phrase.

The simple given name is in [PS5], but there will be more on the surname piece below. Here are two additional examples. The example in (5) is described by the Kleene star in [PS3] and the one in (6) by the optional surname piece in [PS5]:

Thus the given name, no matter its form, may occur as many times as needed.

We will note here as well that there are different ways that Western cultures have chosen to separate the elements of a compound given name.

The example in (7) is French. It is quite common in modern times for French speaking people to separate the elements of a given name with a hyphen. In earlier times in Germany the customary way to designate the nickname (hypocorism) of a person was to use the participle “genannt” formed from “nennen,” which means name. This would also be classed as a connector, viz., a separator. We may repeat here the rules classifying the separator.