Reply To: When & why did we start giving children more than one name?

The early bibliographies of sefarim in the 17th century clearly showed that many people had double forenames (personal names, as opposed to surnames or nicknames). Albeit this was limited to authors of sefarim, who by definition are more “hashuv” than the average yid. Interesting, at that time the custom of Ashkenazim was to use the second of the two names as what one usually called the person (“Shmuel David” know to his friends as David). The discussions of writing a “get” (the only time it is really important to get the names right) also so that double personal names are not a new invention.