I have a temp job in a fancy club and I was going over a list of memebers and noticed a lot of people list themselves as such:
C. Brent Smith
A. Martin Doe
K. James Johnson.
I have only known one other person who has done this and he was an attorney.
So I was wondering if anyone here does this? And in your experience is it only wealther people that do so? I think it’s kind of a cool thing
Actors (e.g Michael J. Fox) will do this if there is another actor already registered with the same name as them* - possibly the attorney needs to for the same reason. Perhaps the family tradition is that sons always take the name of the father and it is a way to distinguish between them (sort of like Davis Love III) - that could be a wealthy thing, traditions tend to be maintained for longer in rich families…
Grim
*some take a new name completely
I’m not rich, but do it on formal documents and in my signature. It’s because I’ve always been called by my middle name and that’s what I go by.
Some people do it because they don’t like being “junior” under a famous name. Like if your dad was John D. Rockefeller you might rather be J. David Rockefeller, rather than John D., Jr.
I had a friend in college who was neither wealthy nor famous but did it because he had an extremely common first name, and a zany middle name that he preferred to use. So instead of Bob P. Jones, it was B. Pikachu Jones.
Not from a rich family, either. My mother’s and my first names are the same and our voices are similar. As a teenager, when I began babysitting jobs, I started using “X. Middlename Lastname” to avoid confusion when potential employers called my house.
This also helped prevent people from asking for “Firstname Junior” or asking, “Am I speaking with ‘Young Firstname’ or ‘Old Firstname’?” (Mom was not thrilled with being called “Old Firstname”.)
While most definitely not rich my son uses his middle name. This is mostly because he had his middle name only until he was a couple days old and we finally had to fill out the birth certificate. We couldn’t find a middle name that we were happy about so the additional name we chose became his first but never used name.
Same here. I share my first name with my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Could get confusing otherwise.
That’s probably it, the confusing thing. A lot of the problem is, when I carry bills from dept to dept, is the members have the same name as grandfather, father and son, so you have to make sure you get the, third or junior whatever to get the bill right
The great San Francisco writer Herb Caen called that “parting the name on the left.”
In more “established” families there are first names that get re-used that are considered old-fashioned and some people would prefer not to be stuck with a name like “Elmer” and such. So they switch to a middle name if it’s more to their liking.
Among certain socio-economic groups “breeding” is considered important, and displaying the families history by propagating great-uncle Mervin’s name goes with that.
Using the same name with Jr./III etc. is a special case of that.
Not in my experience. I have a number of colleagues who go by their middle name, and in professional contexts use the initial initial for their first name.
I think this is more of a professional thing than a class thing (to the extent the two are separate). There are plenty of middle class and poor people who go by their middle names. However, in most contexts they will just write/use their middle name without even bothering to include the initial. It’s only in professional or social (e.g. fancy club) situations that someone’s “real” name matters. So you’ll see it among bankers, attorneys, professors, etc, and not so much among plumbers and gas station attendants.
My brother does it and he is poor as dirt.
I go by my middle name. That is because my first name is considered a girls name and I’m a guy. Even now, as a 50 year old professional, I can get teased by colleagues that learn my first name. I didn’t come from rich origins and I am now on the low end of the 6 figure club.
I can’t remember where I read this, but I think I read that J P Morgan went by J Pierpont Morgan because he didn’t like his first name.
Isn’t this practice pretty common in India, both among rich and non-rich people?
My father does this, because his first name is ethnic and his middle name is a standard English name, and when he was in business (from the 1940’s-1980’s), it made life easier to go by a standard English name. His grandson, however, now has the same first name. It’s old-fashioned in the country of origin, but is cool and unique here and now.
i had a teacher
f. ordinarymiddlename ordinarylastname
and was addressed by peers as ordinarymiddlename or most frequently a nick name of that.
the first name was either a very old first name or a family last name and so it was very different.
My mom has been called by a nickname taken from her middle name pretty much from the day she was born. When she got older, she didn’t want to end up being known by her first name, so on legal documents and all she’s (First Initial) (Middle Name) (Last Name).
Her family wasn’t moneyed by any stretch of the imagination, FWIW.
My brother does it. He’s a lawyer, but not particularly rich. I think that he just doesn’t like his first name.
I have a friend who does it at times, though sometimes he doesn’t bother and just drops the first initial. As it happens he just can’t stand his given first name and prefers to go by his middle name. He’s dirt poor, just as a data point.