Was the assumption that you’d get married and your maiden name would be your middle name?
All the middle names in my immediate family are “sounds nice”; my mom is one of 12 kids and the middle name of one uncle is the doctor that delivered most of them. I’ve always liked that.
I kept my name when I married, and gave it to my son as a second middle name.
My first name is my grandmother’s name, and my middle name (the name that I go by) is one that my parents picked just because they liked it.
It’s Bo, isn’t it? And your last name is Boarder. Snowboarder Bo Boarder, banana-fanna fo forder, me-my-mo morder, Boarder!
My middle name is Michelle. Ma was going to call my brother Michael, and then refer to the two of us as Mike and Mickey. :eek: Thank heavens Dad stopped her.
As someone who spends a lot of time finding ancestors for myself and others, I love it when surnames are used as middle names or even first names. That makes it easier to find families, especially when the name leads to a previously hard-to-find female line.
On the other hand, I had a set of gggg grandparents who loved to give their sons names that were surnames of completely unrelated people. I tried tracking those surnames down as possible ancestral surnames, but they were not related in any way, shape, or form.
They were playing head games with me across time. Tricksters! 
My middle name is just a common given name. It was a popular name at the time, but not so popular now. As far as I can tell, I’m not named after anyone.
I am also “the Third”, in that my first, middle, and last names are the same as my father and grandfather. I don’t like it, also because it is pretentious, and I don’t like my middle name either. My wife wanted to name our son the Fourth, but I put my foot down - we are not founding a Carolingian dynasty here.
My wife certainly has a middle name - her family is Catholic, and you can’t throw a brick at a reunion without hitting at least three women with the same first name.
Regards,
Shodan III
Middle names have never been the norm in Norway, although there’s a trend in that direction currently. Double first names were probably more common.
Only three out of eight great-grandparents had a middle name, only one out of four great-grandparents, both my parents, but they disliked theirs, so me and my brothers have none.
My family had middle names for the boys and no middle names for the girls as they were expected to get married and use their maiden names as middle names. Then my mom got pissy when my sister legally changed her last name to her partner’s last name, and kept our surname as a middle name. You can never win in ultra-conservative families.
My middle name was a mistake. My parents named me after a famous Mormon figure, but they only knew his middle initial. In the pre-internet days of the past, they simply guessed, and guessed wrongly. Growing up I disliked my middle name for that reason, but since doping out, it has become a point of pride.
No, and I’ve always felt bad about it, I didn’t like my first name, and could have used it as a substitute.
Somebody give me one?
My middle name is my maternal grandfather’s American name. Which is kind of odd as no one in the family ever called him that, they use his Chinese name. I never met him; he died before I was born. I suppose my parents thought my name would look weird with his Chinese name in the middle, but I don’t really know.
When I was born, my parents allowed my (8 year old) sister and (5 year old) brother to name me. My brother’s best friend was Philip, so my middle name is Philippa. I don’t like it much but do feel I dodged a few bullets there.
My mother and father both say that, up until about 48 hours before I was born, I was to be Nicholas Aaron Lastname, named after my dad’s friend, Nick Soandso. However, they had a falling out, and it was switched to Aaron Nicholas Lastname at the 11th hour.
My middle name is my grandmother’s maiden name. I always hated it until I started doing genealogy research. My oldest son has the same middle name, which my catholic ex-wife was not happy with.
Lee.
Unisex, generic, ubiquitous. 
I’m a junior, so I voted “family given name,” as it was my father’s middle name as well.
I still have no idea where either my first or middle names came from historically. My paternal grandmother had an uncle whose middle name was my father’s (and hence my) first name. That’s the closest connection I can make.
I was named after two of my mother’s beloved relatives. Not their full names but names starting with the same initials as theirs. I believe that’s a Jewish tradition. Speaking of which, I also have a Hebrew first and middle name. Also also, the middle name I was given by my birth mother just happens to be the name of my father’s much adored mother(way cooler names than the ones my adoptive parents gave me but you can’t blame them for wanting to give me a name of their choosing).
As an aside, does anyone remember back in childhood when everyone was embarrassed by their middle name and you never wanted anyone to know it?
You missed a possibility. Many people have a middle name that is their own maiden name. In parts of Appalachia, it’s common that when a woman marries, she moves her old last name to the middle position, replacing whatever middle name she was given at birth.
See post 37.
Out of those four options, I would go with ‘ubiquitous.’
Or think of the experiences in your life. For example, have you crushed enough bones to be named ‘Bonecrusher’?
My middle name is my mother’s middle name. I don’t think my sisters’ middle names came from anywhere. But my parents obviously liked one-syllable middle names for girls.
