Queen Elizabeth II of the British commonwealth does quite well without a surname. She has enough variety in her full name to almost never be in need of another name. Allow me to guide you.
I think the name Elizabeth has more variety than any other English name. You might even call it the “queen of names”. From it, one can derive: Eliza, Elle, Ellie, Ella, Liz, Lizzie, Liza, Abby, Beth, Bette, Betty, Betsy, Bess, Elsie and Libby. That’s 16 total different names.
Her next name is actually a number. It is II. Now everyone knows this can also be written 2. As well, Toots and Tootsie can be derived from this name for a full 4 different names.
Her next name is Alexandra and it also has a lot of derivations: Ally, Alex, Lexi, Andy, Sandra and Sandy. That’s a total of 7 different names.
Her final name is Mary which has the following derivations: May, Mamie, Maria, Marie, Marilyn, Marion,Maureen, Meg, Miriam, Molly and Polly. This is a total of 12 different names.
So the queen can be called by 16 x 4 x 7 x 12 = 5 376 different names. As the title asks, who needs a surname with that amount of latitude in your given names?
I know some of you are probably thinking I went too far afield from the original names such as in Polly for Mary. I assure you that some of the most far afield names, I got from my Websters’ New World Dictionary (1979). I could have insisted on putting Marj or Marg and all their myriad variations in, after all they only differ by one letter from Mary. I didn’t because that same dictionary told me not to.
