If you're like most of us, there's probably a good chance you've made fun of a person's middle name at some point in your life. As an adult, such teasing is usually done with a modicum of good-naturedness — as in "Really? What were your parents thinking?" — but I have memories of mean kids getting cruel about it, as though the victims of their jabs actually had something to do with selecting their own unusual names.
This all occurred to me recently when I was wondering about Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, and if that name "Mitt" was short for something else. As it turns out, Mitt is his middle name, apparently in its entirety. His first name is Willard. Based on Romney's wealth and lineage, I suspected that Mitt was his mother's maiden name, but evidently it's not.
That was a reasonable guess, though, since it's common in many families to insert Mom's or an ancestor's name into a descendant's. That's how we get monikers like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Edgar Rice Burroughs or William Kennedy Smith. Being named Bill Smith carries a lot more weight when it includes that direct link to the American Camelot pedigree.
A somewhat awkward example of that practice might be Robert S. McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense who's often blamed for the war in Vietnam. His middle initial, honoring his mother's maiden name, stood for Strange. Then there's Richard M. Nixon, whose middle name borrowed from his mother led to the nerdy character of Milhouse on The Simpsons.
Sometimes the addition of a third name can make a person appear classier or more sophisticated. For instance, Robert Louis Stevenson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Edgar Allen Poe are all very distinctive sounding. Ollie Holmes and Ed Poe just don't command the same attention.
On the other hand, certain compound names can have the opposite effect, or maybe it's just my urban predispositions. When I hear names like Billy Bob or Betty Sue, they get categorized (maybe unfairly) at the opposite end of my perception spectrum from Elizabeth Barrett Browning or John Phillip Sousa.
However, Tommy Lee Jones sure sounds like a good ol' boy's name, but the movie star is an Oscar-winning Harvard graduate who supposedly helped to inspire the character of preppy Oliver Barrett IV in that sappy book, "Love Story." Guess that goes to show I shouldn't stereotype.
Some kids are stuck with odd middle names to fulfill a family tradition or other obligation. Sportscaster Bob Costas named his son Keith Michael Kirby Costas after making a promise, optimistically and jokingly, to baseball player Kirby Puckett that he would name his then-unborn child after him if Puckett were batting .350 when the boy was born. Oops.
For you fans of really obscure trivia, the whiny kid Ritchie Petrie on the classic Dick Van Dyke TV show in the 1960s had the middle name of "Rosebud." In one episode, his parents explained that the name was an acronym given to him to honor seven relatives whose initials just happened to spell R-O-S-E-B-U-D. I'll bet Barack Obama's parents couldn't have imagined the trouble they'd cause with a middle name like Hussein.
A buddy of mine once devised a playful little theory. He said that if you take your middle name and add it to the name of the street where you live, you come up with a great-sounding character for a soap opera. In his case, it formed Charles Briarcliff. We had other friends whose similarly contrived soap-star names were Culver Fairhaven, Lawson Brynwyck and Clement Devonshire. At our house in Webster Groves, my son would have become Briggs Hollywood. Seriously. That's a bit too cheesy. The trick obviously doesn't work every time, though. For ten years, my character's name would have been Gerard Ralph. Not exactly star quality.
Another thing that intrigues me about middle names is how many famous bad guys carry them. History has given us John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wayne Gacy, James Earl Ray and Mark David Chapman (the guy who shot John Lennon). Tammy Faye Bakker. I might add Catherine Zeta Jones to that list because she's so good-looking it should be a crime.
Here are a few more fun facts on this topic. Richard Gere's middle name is Tiffany. Do you know what Tom Cruise's middle name is? It's actually Cruise; his full given name is Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. Harry S. Truman didn't have a middle name; it was simply the letter S.
Speaking of presidents, if Mr. Romney were to be elected in November, my friend's soap opera name game would make him Mitt Pennsylvania. Naahh.
Steve Unger has been professionally writing for 30-plus years to help companies sell stuff. His Journal columns are a labor of love to salute the people, places and charm of St. Louis. If you'd like to share a memory of St. Louis or just drop him a line, he can be reached at stevethewordguy@aol.com.
