As you would recognize if you were one of us (“one of us! one of us!”), NMI stands for “No Middle Initial”. For reasons moderately unclear to me, neither my brother nor I has a middle name. Mom says it’s because our last name is complicated, but surely other people with complicated last names have a middle name as well?
My wife also has no middle name, but we’ve been profligate handing them out to our children.
When I was a kid and those scantronic test cards were new, mine kept getting kicked out if I skipped the column for middle initial, so for years my middle initial was “X” in the school system. Xavier it is!
I’m aware that outside the US middle names might be less common, or non-existent in some places. From my perspective you’re all in the NMI club!
Fellow NMI-er (or NMN-er) here, as well as my brother and both of our parents. It was thought we’d just pick our own at some point, but no one ever did.
My draft card, from back in the '60s, had “NMN” as my middle name.
It was never a serious problem until I had to fill out a very lengthy online questionnaire for supplemental Medicare insurance. After spending a couple of hours on the form, I couldn’t submit it without a middle initial. When I tried adding a fictitious one, everything froze. I then had to call in, and fill out the entire form orally, spelling everything out.
And how many times have you heard “Whaddya mean you don’t have a middle name? Everyone has a middle name!”
Isn’t that why Ulysses S. Grant acquired the middle S, because the Army told him a middle initial was required?
Then there’s the legend of Private Ronly Bonly Jones. Seeking to enter the Army, young Mr. Jones told his recruiting sergeant that he had no real given names, only initials, because his parents, who couldn’t agree on what to call him, had dubbed him R. B. Jones. The sergeant entered the recruit on the enlistment forms as R(only) B(only) Jones and Jones spent the rest of his military career as Ronly Bonly.
I have a middle name, but no middle initial because my middle name starts with nothing. Technically it starts with a space, but that’s hard to represent on a form.
[sub]It has to, or it would blend in with my first name. Why, yes, I have been working too hard lately. Why do you ask?[/sub]
99% of my job involves looking at legal documents. I used to deal with one specific set of legal documents on which “NMI” or its cousin “NMN” were common enough that I’d think, “Our records don’t require one. If they don’t have one, don’t put anything!”
My parents didn’t give any of the 5 of us middle names. When I was confirmed, I began using my confirmation name as my middle name, and it caused a little problem when I enlisted in the Navy because it wasn’t on my birth certificate. Once I got married, I started using my maiden name in place of the middle name, and that’s what’s on my driver’s license and passport.
Since my folks didn’t have the option of using first-middle-last to let us know we were in big trouble, they would use the Polish version of our names. Tho now that I think of it, they only did that to me and one of my sisters. My brother’s name was too much of a mouthful in Polish, and by the time my youngest sisters came along, I think my folks gave up.
My dad had no middle name. Rumour has it that his dad (my grandfather) stopped at the pub for a celebratory drink or 8 on the way to the local register and by the time he got there couldn’t remember what middle name they’d settled on.
Have to add, after looking at the readily available name statistics for Norway, that although it supports my point of NMI being common, it also shows the prevalence of double first names.
The currently most common first name for Norwegian males is Jan. There are 48,981 male Jan Something-or-other in Norway currently. Only 9,142 have it as their only first name, but that’s not because all the rest have middle names, it’s because their first name is: Jan Erik (5,406), Jan Ove (1,319), Jan Tore (1,219) or something. And the distribution of the second half there will be wildly different from the distribution of those as separate first names, since they will very often be the name they use daily. Jan Tore’s mother will call him Jan Tore all the time, not just when she’s mad at him.
A lot of the current top names are like that, but they differ a lot in the percentage of “only name” use and eventually, at position nine, we find Thomas. There are 24,162 Thomases in Norway currently, and for 19,561 that’s their only name (other than surname). Why? Because there are no traditional combinations that sound euphonious to Norwegians. And lest you think that’s just because it’s not that traditionally Norwegian, a bit further down we find the super-Norse Rune with 19,063 total and 15,722 only.
My own name comes way down the list with 4917 other Norwegian men sharing it as their first first name, and for me and 4292 others it’s our only name.
Grant’s birth name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. He grew up being known by his middle name (generally shortened to Ulys). When he applied to West Point, he wrote to his Congressman. Because he was generally known as Ulysses Grant, the Congressman assumed Ulysses was his first name. When his name was submitted to West Point somebody added Simpson (which was Grant’s mother’s last name) as his middle name.
Grant was okay with having Ulysses as his first name but he wanted to keep Hiram as his middle name. He spent a couple of years using Ulysses H. Grant and trying to get it accepted but the military records persisted with Ulysses S. Grant because that was their original entry. Grant finally gave in and accepted Simpson as his middle name.
NMI here. Neither of my parents had a middle name either, although both my younger brother and sister did. I think in both cases, someone whose name they could use had died in the meantime (Ashkenazy practice to name after a recently deceased relative).
When I registered for the draft, they told me that when I was drafted I would have to choose a middle name because my first and last names were too common. I was never drafted. Curiously, when my brother enisted in the Air Force, they insisted he use the name on his birth certificate, a name he had never used previously.
I once had the following conversation with a woman I know and generally like a lot.
-What is your middle name?
-I don’t have one.
-Come on, everyone has a middle name.
-Not me and, in fact, neither of my parents.
-Come on, I promise I won’t tell anyone.
-Sorry, I have no middle name.
There were one or two more interations, but in the end she clearly didn’t believe me. Incidentally, if she had been right that I had an embarrassing middle name, I certainly wouldn’t have told her. I did tell her my true last name (which, like my brother, I have never used, but that is another story).
Incidentally, if you look me up on Wiki, there are three other people with the same first and last names as me, each of whom does have a middle initial. The lady at the draft board was not wrong.
