Middle Names
- Three Presidents used their middle name as their given name:
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- John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. went by Calvin
- Stephen Grover Cleveland went by Grover
- Thomas Woodrow Wilson went by Woodrow
- Seventeen of the 43 presidents to date have no known middle name.
- Franklin Pierce is sometimes referred to as Franklin K. Pierce: the 'K' possibly standing for his mother's maiden name of Kendrick. However, there is no evidence that Pierce was given a middle name at birth or ever used a middle name or middle initial.
- Several Presidential middle names were originally surnames: Baines, Birchard, Delano, Fitzgerald, Walker, Knox, Milhous, Quincy, and Simpson, et al. Most of these were the President's mother's maiden name.
- Gerald Rudolph Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. therefore giving him the middle name of Lynch before his mother remarried when he was three years old; his name was not legally changed until 1935 while in law school.
- Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. His name was wrongly entered as Ulysses S. Grant when he entered the United States Military Academy.
- Harry S. Truman's middle name was only an initial; the "S" didn't stand for another name. Nevertheless he signed his name using the period after the letter.
- George Herbert Walker Bush is the only President with two middle names.
- There are no duplicate Presidential middle names, with the partial exception of Herbert Walker and Walker.
- Two Presidents have middle names which are also Presidential last names: Ronald Wilson Reagan and William Jefferson Clinton.
Read more about this topic: List Of Presidents Of The United States By Name
Famous quotes containing the words middle and/or names:
“We hear the haunting presentiment of a dutiful middle age in the current reluctance of young people to select any option except the one they feel will impinge upon them the least.”
—Gail Sheehy (b. 1937)
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)