About those middle names

[vakkotaur]

Clark: Herbert Clark Hoover
David: Dwight David Eisenhower
Earl: James Earl Carter
Gamaliel: Warren Gamaliel Harding
Herbert: George Herbert Walker Bush
Howard: William Howard Taft
Jefferson: William Jefferson Clinton
Rudolph: Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr.
Trick question: no middle name: Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley

Sidney, Sigmund, Stephen, Steven: Included to provide distraction from Sidney.

Orvan, Valentine: Included to fill things out and avoid obvious Presidential middle name such as Delano (FDR), Fitzgerald (JFK), and Baines (LBJ) and simply S. (Harry S. Truman). I also left out Walker (George Herbert Walker Bush), Wilson (Thomas Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Wilson Reagan) and avoided any earlier than McKinley.

The bit about "Joe the Plumber" not really being named Joe as that was merely his middle name is quite silly. Consider Thomas Woodrow Wilson and John Calvin Coolidge.

Comments

[hellboy78.livejournal.com]

simply S. (Harry S. Truman) is because he wasn't given a middle name at birth but to sound more distinguished he chose the middle initial S

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Sort of like the old Ashton-Tate whose founders came up with the name to sound distinguished. There was no Ashton and there was no Tate involved.

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

Or Hiram Ulysses Grant, who changed his name to Ulysses S. Grant (making up "Simpson" on the spur of the moment when asked what the S stood for) so that he would not have to have anything monogrammed "HUG" when he went to West Point.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I think that might be counted as a survival skill in his case.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

Well, I doubt he chose anything "at birth" except when he wanted to eat next.

What I have heard (and Wikipedia backs me up, so you can check there) was that it was a compromise between two important ancestors of his.

Somewhat like my son's middle name. We wanted it to be after both his grandfathers (my wife's father and my father), both of them are named "Robert" so it was an easy compromise, but the "Robert" doesn't stand for a specific grandfather, but both of them.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

And now... Barack Hussein Obama.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Can you imagine the reaction to something like the Ernestine the Operator sketches on Laugh-In that dared to use Hussein now as they did Milhouse then?

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

You don't watch Colbert, eh?

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Only Claudette.