What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?
The world of given names is one where silliness runs deep; not least where associations between name and ‘special meanings’ are evoked. My middle name is DOUGLAS. It was given to me so that I bore my father’s first name as well as his last. Nevertheless, even silliness evokes moments of possible, if very partial, truth. It is all a matter of shades of interpretation, however – for if the Celtic etymology of the name means much at all, it is ambiguous as to the favourability of its associations. If it means isolation and thoughtfulness, it equally means something somewhat treacherous in its secrecy. In many ways, I wish I could be more secret, if not treacherous, and wish that, if I am isolated and thoughtful, I was so in a way that felt contentment in that state.
Most names anyway come from other names, ones considered those of the more socially significant. The most likely origin of Douglas is the family or clan name (therefore a second name) from Scotland. It has its own tartan, below modelled by a manly guy with huge hands, fingering that leather belt as if he meant business – well, I can dream!:
Wikipedia’s entry on the name gives credence to the origin I mention, associating it with the violence of the clan, which held the Border but ruled over much more land. However, how this family name became a Christian name is less clear, although it may be an icon of allegiance to the landowning violence and authority of the family.
Douglas is a masculine given name which originated from the surname Douglas. Although today the name is almost exclusively given to boys, it was used as a girl’s name in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the north of England.[1] The Scottish surname Douglas was borne by one of the most powerful families of the Kingdom of Scotland (the Earls of Douglas, Angus, Morton, Dukes of Hamilton and others). It has sometimes been stated that the given name is connected with the given name Dougal, although it is more likely derived from the surname already mentioned.[2]
Given that explanation however, which certainly tells us why it was once had non-binary attribution as a name, it surprises me that not only is the name now decided to be gender-specific but to take on some of the most toxic associations of the ‘masculine’ in masculinity. It took some guile and what we call (unfortunately) ‘balls’ to rule in the borders. That town in Galloway named Castle Douglas was apparently founded in the eighteenth century by a ‘Douglas’ of no familial association with the Scottish family from nearby Threave Castle, but it can sometimes on a grey day, looking at its grim blood-red town hall, seem associated with its darkness, although at other times it is beautiful and airy in the views down its long main street.
Threave Castle though has it all. Broken masculinity, broken by its own internal struggles with itself, seems to give a meaning to this Castle of the Douglas.
South Artillery Tower By David Hawgood, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=478798
Lots of holes are blown through this phallic myth of course. Hence, let’s remember the name when it could grace people across that supposed sex/gender divide. When I look back at memories of my Dad, Douglas, I remember a man who dreamed of masculine integrity, as in this picture where with his friends, they enact an adventure of a knight-at-arms, though I pity the boy who had to be the back-end of the horse, entirely covered up from history by my grandma, Elsie’s, bedspread. Douglas, though, had to be the one riding the horse.
But Douglas Bamlett was, in truth, a gentle man, in the way the strong-armed blacksmith Joe Gargery in Great Expectations is a gentle man rather than the gentleman his snobby son Pip prefers. Once, he had black hair like a true Douglas, but in age, his hair softened, just as did the character he showed. Now, Dad, as I think of you, I love that I have your name centering me, though, in truth, it reminds me too that you were a man latterly of dark moods and sometimes suicidal intention. And I love you, Douglas.
With love Steven xxxxx
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