I always thought Benedict Cumberbatch was a stage name. You know- like Whoopi Goldberg or Portia de Rossi or Elvis Costello…
Yeah, and I know the British are fond of giving their children sixty thousand names, but really- Benedict Cumberbatch? How was he not beaten up every day at school?
Sounds like a villain in a Sherlock Holmes novel…
(Which is not to say that I don’t like the actor. I think he’s great!)
Duck And Cover 
My theory is that he went to a school where everyone had names like Edmund Wigglesworth
I hope so. If he went to a public school- that name would have gotten him beaten up, every single day.
I like to think it was a drunken dare – like his parents were in the pub and their gang was trying to come up with ever more outlandish names and someone yelled BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH, THAT WOULD BE HILARIOUS, and before they sobered up, they’d had their surname legally changed and had commited publicly to “Benedict”.
Also (this one is actually true, I’m told) in the Cumberbatch family home they have a clock which has different birds instead of numbers. “Oh goodness, I must dash – it’s already half past chaffinch!”