What is the origin of the saying “Danger? Danger is my middle name!” The kids these days say “Austin Powers”, but as a 40 year-old that got the he-entered-his-name-wrong-and-waited-decades-to-tell-the-punchline joke, I don’t buy it. The correct answer is important to me, because, well, Danger is my (legal) middle name!
This seems to have been asked here before, with the earliest use being 1966 and the earliest use of the exact phrase being E.B. White’s 1970 The Trumpet of the Swan.
And if you want to take it really far back, the cliché might have been inspired by a line from the Renaissance poet Spenser. From the Faerie Queene, book IV, verse XVII:
His [a hideous giant’s] name was Daunger dreaded ouer all,
Who day and night did watch and duely ward,
From fearefull cowards, entrance to forstall,
And faint-heart-fooles, whom shew of perill hard
Could terrifie from Fortunes faire adward:
For oftentimes faint hearts at first espiall
Of his grim face, were from approaching scard;
Vnworthy they of grace, whom one deniall
Excludes from fairest hope, withouten further triall.
It seems to me that “danger is my middle name” is just a variation on a general statement “X is my middle name,” where X is some noun used to emphasize an aspect of your personality or experience or attitude.
A cursory glance of Google Books turns up the following early examples:
Exactly to Zut. Danger is my middle name is not a specific line as such, it’s one of many “[attribute] is my middle name” lines. The joke “Danger is my middle name” is indeed from Austin Powers in that it was a line from that movie where Austin was suggesting that Danger really is his middle name. I.e., the Austin Powers joke is based on the very old cliche. So it depends on how you say it. If you say “Danger’s my middle name baby, yeah”, then you’re taking it from Austin Powers, if you’re just saying “danger’s my middle name” in the context of you being a risk taker then it is much much older.
In all seriousness, is this at all related to the practice of naming cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church? It seems very odd (to me) that when someone becomes a cardinal, this title is not placed prior to one’s name, but rather between one’s given name and family name. For example, why is he called John Cardinal O’Connor instead of Cardinal John O’Connor, or Francis Cardinal Spellman instead of Cardinal Francis Spellman? Does it have anything to do with this “My middle name is __” stuff?
I’m reminded of a quote from “Friends” when Chandler says “Handle is my middle name… actually, it’s the middle part of my first name.” For some reason that line always made me laugh.