When Francis Hurt inherited the Renishaw estate in 1777, he changed his surname to Sitwell. His eight-year-old son and heir Sitwell Hurt thus grew up to be Sir Sitwell Sitwell. ‘Perhaps his hypersensitive descendant should resume the patronymic and call himself Sir Hurt Hurt,’ Evelyn Waugh once remarked of his contemporary Osbert Sitwell.
I was reminded of this by a declaration from Rebecca Long-Bailey that her name now bears a hyphen.
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