Anne Isabella Byron, Baroness Byron - Name

Name

Her names were unusually complex. She was born at Elemore Hall, Pittington, Durham as Anne Isabella Milbanke, the only child of Sir Ralph Milbanke, 6th Baronet, and his wife the Hon. Lady Milbanke, sister of Thomas Noel, Lord Wentworth. When Lord Wentworth died, a few months after Anne Isabella's marriage to Lord Byron, her father, who inherited a large part of the estate, changed his name to Sir Ralph Noel. When her mother died, Anne Isabella and her husband changed their names to Noel also; her mother had required this as a condition for inheriting her considerable estate; her mother disliked Byron's name so much that she had written a letter to the Prince Regent, requesting that he give her daughter the title of "Lady Wentworth" (a barony separate from the one she would eventually inherit), so that her parents would not have to call her "Byron".

So she was first Anne Isabella, Baroness Byron or Lady Byron, and then Anne Isabella Noel, Baroness Byron. Her uncle had been both Viscount and Baron Wentworth, which titles were inherited differently: the viscountcy became extinct, and the barony fell into abeyance between her mother and her cousin Nathaniel Curzon, 3rd Baron Scarsdale. When Curzon died without heirs in 1856, Baroness Byron became Baroness Wentworth, in her own right, as sole claimant; but she did not use the title. She signed her letters "A. I. Noel Byron" and her will as "Baroness Noel-Byron". The world knew her as "Lady Byron", and her friends called her by her nickname "Annabella".