DOUBLE-BARRELLED NAMES

Irish Independent, Wednesday 14 January 1914

DOUBLE-BARRELLED NAMES.

The number of people who, when they have advanced in the social scale, assume double-barrelled names is legion. They generally manage to chose some name which seems to run easily into their own proper name. Sometime the lady of the family takes a name because she has a dim recollection of having heard it before, and in connection with some very nice people. The results are often ludicrous, as, for instance, when we find poor old Mrs. Poole, of Ballyjoebrophy, develop into Mrs. Snooker-Poole, of Rathmines square, or perhaps Mrs. Duffy, the ambitious widow of a country grocer, change her name with her residence, and have her visiting cards printed— Mrs. Plomb-Duffy.

Mrs. Poole had a hazy recollection of at one time hearing some nice-looking men in a railway carriage talk a lot about some “Snooker-Poole.” Military men they were, if she knew anything, for apart from the fact that they wore closely cropped moustaches, and wristlet watches, they repeatedly alluded to “good shots” and “cannons,” and one of them—a red-faced man, who slept through a great part of the journey—said that after five or six rounds he could hardly see to fire. Of course they must have been officers. Mrs. Poole, assuming that officers would know the best people, at once decided to add “Snooker” to her name, and did so.