BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names

Subject: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: meself
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 01:04 PM

Yes, this is frivolous, so feel free to scold. Anyway: I know the middle names of my immediate family members, a few Great Writers (e.g., Henry WADSWORTH Longfellow) - and almost all of the US presidents of my lifetime, and several before my lifetime. I know the middle names of only two or three Canadian Prime Ministers, even though I'm Canadian. There seems to be a sense in the American media that uttering the middle name of a president - or even a would-be president, such as Hilary RODHAM Clinton - lends a kind of gravitas to the personage. Occasionally this seeps over the northern border: this morning on the CBC, a reporter, in delivering the big, serious news that the border is being (almost) closed, said that this had just been announced in a Tweet from "President Donald J. Trump" - um ... as opposed to President Donald Q. Trump? - we don't want any confusion ....

Reminds me of exasperated mothers calling out the full names of their recalcitrant children, when I was a kid: "Robert Mortimer Aloysius Jones - you get in this house right now!" (Was/is that a universal thing?).

Anyone else amused or bemused by this?

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 03:45 PM

Hilary Rodham Clinton may just be trying to continue her maiden surname, Rodham, although her two brothers could also see the name taken forward to other generations.
It could also be that, as a lawyer, she needs to continue to also be known as Hilary Rodham (retaining the name just as actors/authors do).
Or she could have been making it easier to revert to her maiden name if she had been so unfortunate as to have a philandering husband.

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: Senoufou
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 04:21 PM

I used to be furious that my sister was given a middle name (Ann) but I wasn't. She often tormented me (as children do) but I'd manage to get one over on her by emphasising that MY name was the same as that of The Queen. Nobody at all in my husband's huge family has a middle name.
I must ask him why that is.

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: Mr Red
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 05:24 PM

Harry S Truman, Spiro T Agnew - go on - give them a middle name.

Not to mention Winston Churchill, the American author, not Winston Spencer CHurchill - they wrote to each other when the latter started to publish.

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 05:38 PM

S was a good one.

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: gillymor
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 05:38 PM

My sisters did not receive middle names but the eldest adopted Edgar (which was my Grandfather's first name and my oldest brother's middle) when she was a very little girl and is still referred to as Laurie Edgar by family members.

Milhouse is probably the most famous (or infamous) Presidential middle name and the old crook was honored with a namesake on The Simpsons.

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: gillymor
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 05:58 PM

whoops, RMN spelled it Milhous and The Simpsons character was Milhouse.

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 06:02 PM

How about Hiram Ulysses Grant? His grandfather gave him his middle name (drawn from others in a hat) to stop familial bickering about what it was to be. On his application to West Point he put "H. Ulysses Grant" and the admitting office missed the H and assumed his first name was Ulysses. The AO then compounded the mistake by assuming that his middle name was his mother's maiden name, Simpson. So he was enlisted as, and known forever after, as Ulysses Simpson Grant (don't try to get the Army to change anything!).

This is the story given in his memoirs.

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 06:16 PM

May I politely point out that Ms Clinton's first name is HILLARY, not "Hilary"...?

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: meself
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 06:57 PM

We'll have to put that to a vote, I'm afraid, and the agenda for today's meeting cannot be altered at this point. We'll look at it next week.

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: Mr Red
Date: 19 Mar 20 - 04:21 AM

Ms Clinton's first name is HILLARY, not "Hilary"...?

It don't amount to a Hillary of beans

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: Joe_F
Date: 19 Mar 20 - 09:24 PM

It was common in the 19th & early 20th centuries to call various worthies (especially in literature & politics) by their full triple names, even in conversation: Mary Baker Eddy, Henry Cabot Lodge, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, William Cullen Bryant, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Jacob Astor, William Jennings Bryan, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry Ward Beecher, Julia Ward Howe, Ella Wheeler Wilcox.  The custom continued into the 1950s:  John Foster Dulles, Oveta Culp Hobby, Clare Booth Luce, Norman Vincent Peale. Latterly, it does seem that you have to get into serious trouble to get that treatment (in court, I dare say):  Francis Gary Powers, Richard Milhous Nixon, William Jefferson Clinton.

Subject: RE: BS: US Presidents & their Middle Names
From: BobL
Date: 20 Mar 20 - 03:21 AM

Middle names were a popular item in pub quizzes, and may still be, for all I know. But (thread drift alert) although everyone knew the middle name of UK Prime Minister Margaret Hilda Thatcher, very few knew that of an earlier PM, Harold Wilson.

It's Harold - James Harold Wilson.