As far as I’m aware, we’ve had four presidents who, during their times in office, as well as historically, have been commonly referred to by their initials: FDR, JFK, LBJ, and TR (that’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Theodore Roosevelt, for the historically challenged among us).
Note that, with the possible exception of TR, even today we can casually invoke the initials of the above presidents to refer to them, and most educated listeners will know exactly who we’re talking about. (I doubt, by the way, that “W” will stand the test of time as a shorthand for referring to the 43rd president, and most of the future shorthands used for him may be unprintable here.)
I suppose one of the prerequisites for the common usage of a full 3- or 4-letter presidential abbreviation is that it roll comfortably off the tongue. (Which might partly explain why our last four commanders-in-chief have never been known by their initials: they all have those awkward, 3-syllable W’s in their names [GWB, WJC, GHWB, and RWR].)
Anyway, can anyone tell me if there have been any other U.S. presidents in our 220 year history who were also, at one time or another, popularly referred to by their initials?
Explanation by a former J (Journalism) student: It had nothing to do with the value of a president, but with how many spaces it took to spell out his name. F’rinstance, “Johnson” took up, as I recall, seven spaces, while “LBJ” used only three. That left the headline writer four extra spaces.
Absolutely. The widespread usage of FDR, JFK, and LBJ was an artifact of the glory days of newspaper journalism, when newspapers (a) were important; and (b) relied on huge banner headlines, which put space at a premium, to convey important stories.
Nixon, Ford, and Truman had short names, for which headlines weren’t a problem. Eisenhower had a long name, but was referred to in headlines as “Ike”.
Around the time of Jimmy Carter, people stopped referring to public figures with their middle initials. So if you had been inclined to call Carter JEC or Reagan RWR, no one would have known whom you were talking about. Besides which, their names were only six letters long. Also besides which, banner headlines went out of fashion, as people came to rely on television for breaking stories.
Theodore Roosevelt as TR is different, since so far as I know it wasn’t used by headline writers. It seems to have taken off since the Brands biography. He had a long first name and a long last name, and you have to use both to distinguish him from the other Roosevelt, so this shorthand has obvious value for historians. I suspect it’s more common today than when he was alive.
As for W, it’s hard for it to mean much by itself. If I said I was going to compare the foreign policies of FDR, Carter, and W, I would sound weird. But then, historians will have the same problem that we do in distinguishing him from his father. To call his father G.H.W. Bush is both clumsy and anachronistic, since nobody referred to him that way while he was in office. So who knows.
Well, Bush 41 and Bush 43 seem to have some inertia behind them, at least as blog headline-ese. Maybe ‘Bush’ without disambiguation will simply refer to W, given that GHWB was a one-term wonder who didn’t leave much worthy of a historian’s notice.
All of the above having been said, I think Lyndon Johnson went out of his way to be known as LBJ. His spread in Texas was the LBJ Ranch. His wife, the former Claudia Taylor, was known as Lady Bird Johnson. His daughters were Lynda Bird Johnson and Luci Baines Johnson. He truly loved his initials.
other than running a successful, short war, with minimal casualties and considerable international support, in defence of the basic principle that one country does not unilaterally invade another country?
See? He didn’t do much of interest. Well-behaved presidents who don’t attempt to rewrite the whole system in favor of unchecked executive branch powers, including warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detention of ‘statusless’ prisoners, don’t get many inches of text in the history books. He didn’t even set any records related to approval ratings. Compare Carter to Nixon, or Hayes to Grant.
GHWB was the guy the Republicans went with because Amon-Reagan couldn’t run for a third term and the country went with because Willie Horton and Lee Atwater made a compelling team. W, on the other hand, polarized the country, rewrote our foreign policy, remade our image abroad, and is sure to generate revelations for the next few decades as people die and/or go beyond the reach of extradition treaties.
It’s quite common. On government badges, it will be succeeded by I.O. (initial only). There is also a check box on many forms to signify this is the case, so it’s at least common enough that people find it worthwhile to design forms around it.
Many people don’t know this but Abraham Lincoln prefered to go by his initials and often humorously told people to “Call me Al.” Tragically, this was decades before Paul Simon’s birth and there is no record of anyone getting the President’s joke in his lifetime.
Secretary of War Stanton, in particular, was bewildered. “Why does the President keep calling me Betty?” he’d ask. “My name’s Ed.”
I’m reading a biography of TR’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and it seems he disliked being called “Teddy”, and actually preferred being called “TR”, or something to that effect.