Last Names
- There have been two Adamses, two Bushes, two Harrisons, two Johnsons, and two Roosevelts. All of the pairs except the Johnsons were related to each other.
- Thirty-three of the Presidents have had unique last names.
- Eisenhower and Washington had the longest last names, with 10 letters each.
- Twelve Presidents have last names of three syllables: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Van Buren, both Harrisons, Buchanan, McKinley, both Roosevelts, Kennedy and Obama.
- Eisenhower is the only President whose last name is four syllables long.
- The Bushes, Taft, Polk, and Ford had the shortest last names, with four letters each and only one syllable each. Three other Presidents have longer last names that are still only one syllable: Pierce, Grant and Hayes for a total of seven single syllable last names.
- The remaining Presidents (so far) have names of two syllables regardless of length
- The average Presidential last name has 6.64 letters.
- The only two-word last name is Van Buren. Van is a surname prefix common to people of Dutch or Belgian ancestry.
- Obama is the only President whose last name has more pronounced vowels than its total number of consonants.
- Only three of the ten most common surnames (Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown, Davis, Miller, Wilson, Moore, and Taylor) in the United States have been the surnames of Presidents (Johnson, Andrew and Lyndon; Wilson, Woodrow; and Taylor, Zachary).
Read more about this topic: List Of Presidents Of The United States By Name
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, “just in case” in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity—their links with their dead and the unborn.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)