Lewis Carroll’s middle name was Lutwidge, the same as his mother’s maiden name.
Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in Daresbury, Cheshire, in 1832. His mother was Frances Jane Lutwidge, so “Lutwidge” connected his given names to her family. He later became famous under the pen name Lewis Carroll, rather than under his legal name.
The pseudonym also preserves a transformed version of his real names. “Lewis” is related to Ludovicus, a Latin form associated with Lutwidge, while “Carroll” echoes Carolus, the Latin form of Charles. That deliberate wordplay helped separate the author of imaginative works from the mathematician Charles Dodgson.
A common mix-up is to treat Charles or Dodgson as the middle name. Charles was his first name, Dodgson was his surname, and Lutwidge was the distinctive middle name inherited from his mother’s family.