Talk:William Beckett-Denison

why -Denison
There seems to be no explanation of why the son of Edmund Beckett and Maria Beverley should be called Beckett-Denison.

In an article on Edmund Beckett Wikipedia says "his father had taken the additional name Denison in 1816, but the son dropped it on his father's death in 1874".

Another Wikipedia article states "known until 1816 as Edmund Beckett and from 1816 until 1872 as Edmund Beckett Denison" - again without explanation.

Danensis (talk) 12:43, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Read the second paragraph of Sir Edmund Beckett, 4th Baronet - it mentions that this William's father inherited the estate of Sir Thomas Denison (although the internal link mistakenly points to another Denison family member) through this William's mother. Since the 18th century, it has been a not-so-uncommon practice in the United Kingdom (and maybe also Canada, Australia and New Zealand) for persons with substantial estates (and sometimes also peerage/baronetage titles, depending on the details of the creations of the titles) and sole female heirs to require the husbands of those female heirs to adopt the family surnames in order to inherit said estates/titles. By practicing this, families would keep their estates attached to their respective family surnames despite a lack of male heirs. Some husbands of female heirs would add the surnames of the bequeathing persons to their own (such as "Beckett" being changed to "Beckett-Denison"), while the remainder would do full surname changes (such as "Callander" being changed to "Campbell"). -JohnAlbertRigali (talk) 10:06, 14 January 2017 (UTC)