Posted on 07/12/2014 10:53:55 PM PDT by jocon307
In 1991, I was preparing to publish my first book, about a year I spent teaching junior high school in Japan. Stephen Birmingham, the author of “Our Crowd” and an acquaintance of my parents, offered to give me a blurb but recommended one change: that I drop the middle initial from my name on the cover. As a 26-year-old, baby-faced writer, I was eager to appear older and more sophisticated, so I ignored him.
I’ve regretted it ever since.
I thought of that incident this spring when the actress Ann B. Davis from “The Brady Bunch” died at 88. Her middle initial, so central to her name, seemed so out of place in the more casual air of contemporary life. Was it just my ear or had Mr. Birmingham been right all along? Is the middle initial in decline?
The short answer is yes. John Q. Public has spoken: Time to K.O. the Q.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My father was a Jr. but he and my mom didn’t want my brother to be a III, so they went with what I think is a Canadian tradition and gave my brother my father’s first name but a completely different middle name. In the family we ALWAYS called him by the middle name, but in school and at work he’s never insisted on that and goes by the first name.
There is another Canadian tradition I’ve heard of, Catholic French Canadian, in which all girls get Mary as a first name, but then just use their second name. This caused some problems for a woman my mother knew slightly when she went to enroll her 2 daughters in school - and yes I think it was a Catholic school.
That’s a good bit of trivia!
This is true!
My 3 siblings and I all have 2 middle names. My mom is weird.
Thanks
I just hope the trailer park keeps cranking out guys with the middle name Wayne, so I know to stay away from them.
She prepared things in case any of you wanted to become Oxford Scholars, they always have 3 initials!
“There is another Canadian tradition I’ve heard of, Catholic French Canadian, in which all girls get Mary as a first name, but then just use their second name. This caused some problems for a woman my mother knew slightly when she went to enroll her 2 daughters in school - and yes I think it was a Catholic school.
“
Exactly that way in my mother’s family. She,and her sisters,went by their middle names their entire long lives.
They were born in Nova Scotia and all had Mary as their first name at baptism. I didn’t even know this until I was in my twenties.
.
I was in my mid forties before some one pointed out my intitals pronounced out EVIL...(EVL)
I was Wowed, I never made the connection myself.
It's been kind of a pain my whole life to have people address me by my first name.
And virtually NOBODY can pronounce my last name correctly.
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