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Talk:Baldwin Wake Walker

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Change of Article Name

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Copied from Salmanazar talk page

I notice that you have moved Baldwin Wake Walker to Baldwin Wake-Walker. Do you have any evidence that his correct name was Baldwin Wake-Walker?--Toddy1 (talk) 17:10, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Modern British practise is to hyphenate such names to prevent the penultimate surname being mistaken for a middle name; his son and grandson used the hyphenated version [1]. Earlier C19th usage can vary wildly with names being listed with and without. See also here
I think Wake was originally a middle name, not a surname. Walker was his father's surname, and Wake his mother's maiden name. The use of the surnames of relatives as middle names was not uncommon. I fully accept that there is evidence that his children seem to have adopted the surname Wake-Walker.--Toddy1 (talk) 17:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I'll move it back to Baldwin Wake Walker. Salmanazar (talk) 13:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Surname

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It seems reasonably clear that the subject of this article was born with the surname "Walker" (his father was plain John Walker), that by the time he received a peerage, he preferred the double surname "Wake Walker", and that his descendants adopted the surname Wake-Walker (e.g. Frederic Wake-Walker) to avoid confusion as explained above. So how should he be referred to in the article? Different historians have taken different views on the matter:

  • Walker
    • John Francis Beeler, British naval policy in the Gladstone-Disraeli era, 1866–1880
    • Alastair Wilson, Joseph F. Callo, Who's who in naval history: from 1550 to the present
  • Wake-Walker
    • Roger Parkinson, The late Victorian Navy: the pre-dreadnought era and the origins of the First World War
  • Wake Walker
    • Stanley Bonnett, The price of Admiralty: an indictment of the Royal Navy 1805–1966

Beeler quotes a letter from Disraeli to Lord Derby: “The Admiralty is governed by Sir B Walker who has neither talents, nor science—& as I believe—nor honour” showing that he was plain "Walker" as late as 1858. Gdr 16:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Other sources

  • Walker
    • Frederick Manning, The Life of Sir William White
    • Andrew Lambert, Battleships in Transition and The Last Sailing Battlefleet
    • David K Brown, Before the Ironclad
    • John Fincham, A History of naval Architecture
    • James P Baxter, The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship
    • CJ Bartlett, Great Britain and Sea Power 1815-1853

--Toddy1 (talk) 18:50, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]