Or, to misquote Iakov Smirnov:
“In America, father names you with middle name. In Soviet Russia, middle name names your father.” 
Same arrangement here - my father, myself and my son all have the maiden name of my father’s mother. It’s not a formal tradition, just that my Dad and I kept it on.
My daughter, incidentally, has her mother’s middle name - which happens to be my sister’s forename.
George Herbert Walker Bush’s father married George Herbert Walker’s daughter. It was the merger of two powerful families, and out of gratitude, GHWB was named for his grandpa. George Walker Bush’s naming continued the kissing up.
Mrs Shibb and the Shibblets all have her family name as their middle name. It’s Thai, so a lot more unique than most American middle names. Thais don’t have middle names (they didn’t even have last names until fairly recently), so it was a good way for her to keep her family name when we got married.
I know one family where both daughters have the same middle name. Because the father mispelt it when he registered the older one’s birth, the younger one has the same misspelling.
One branch of my family used the mother’s maiden name as a middle name for a seemingly-random selection of their children, male and female, though others had different middle names.
My grandfather, father and brother all have the same middle name. I’m not sure if the tradition goes back further than that, but I’m hoping my brother will continue it if he has a son.
Also in northern and central India (though not for girls)
My father, uncle, aunt, grandmother, 2x great-aunts, & great-grandfather (no idea if it goes any further back) all have the same middle name: Gilles. They broke the tradition at my generation, none of my siblings or cousins have to wear the name Gilles.
I don’t know why… That side of the family is of English origin, so it’s not like it’s some exotic custom. Nor has it ever been anyone’s maiden name (that we’re aware of) in the dim distant past of the family tree.
Slight hijack: is the feminine only applied to the second written name and not to the surname? I’d previously thought that that name would be Svetlana Ivana Goodenova.
My family has a similar tradition, but as far as I can tell, it’s just a family thing, not a German thing. Ours is a name that alternates generations: Phil(l)ip (spelling has changed). It goes back at least as far as my great-grandfather, but maybe farther. His name was Phillip and my grandfather’s middle name was Phillip. He named my father (his older son) Phillip, and had my father had boys, they would have it as a middle (but lucky me, I’m a girl). My oldest male cousin has the middle name now, and if he follows tradition (he’s getting married this year) he’ll give his first born son the first name Philip. It’s an okay name, but I’m hoping he doesn’t feel he has to follow along if he doesn’t want to.
My brother has the middle name Wayne. He has spent much of his adult life behind bars.
My only brother and I have the same middle name. 20ishm, males, Protestant, New England raised.
It’s my mother’s maiden name. We both share the last name of our father, and our middle name is my mom’s old last name.
It wasn’t until middle school that I learned that this wasn’t as customary as simply taking the father’s last name.
I have a good friend whose parents both coincidentally have the same middle name (Jean). They decided to give all their children the middle name Jean as well, both boys and girls.
Among Bengali Hindus, it is very common for brothers, cousins, and fathers and sons to have the same second given name. Also, a middle name is not just any name; certain names are more commonly used as middle names: Kumar (so common that if a Bengali man doesn’t give his middle name, it’s assumed to be “Kumar”), Shankar, Saday, Sarathi, Mohan, Chandra, Ranjan, Nath, Krishna, Bhushan, Deb, Shundar, Kamal, Das, Lal, etc.
In my Mom’s family, all the girls have the middle name Marie. My sister does as well.
My father & I have the same name (I’m a Jr.), and my brother shares our middle name (Patrick). If I had a son, I’d have given him Patrick as a middle name as well. Won’t happen now, as the plumbing has been sealed off, but…
Mrs. Butler’s family has no such traditions.
I was about to ask. My wife is Chinese, and her middle name was the same as that of all her sisters, and it was the same as their mother’s maiden name. That’s traditional in that culture, as I understand it.
Ed
I’ve mentioned this before, but what the hell.
NajaHusband’s paternal grandfather had seven or eight sons, and gave them all his first name, Edward, as their middle name. In NajaHusband’s generation, he’s the only (and therefore, the last of his family line*) male offspring. He was given the middle name. He wants to name any and all male children we may have with the middle name Edward. I find it… a little repellent, partly because I’m just not all that excited about the name Edward, partly because I don’t have what you’d call a terribly warm relationship with his father, and partly because I figure he already gets to label all the children as “his” with his last name (I am okay with this, and took his name, just sayin’ is all) and don’t see why he needs to further claim the boys as a separate in-group from the girls. It reeks of patriarchy to me and I hate it. He says I read too much into it, and that it’s “just tradition”–I think he doesn’t read enough into it, and has never stopped to consider why someone would do such a thing in the first place.
I offered to compromise and name the first born son per tradition, but he wants them all. It’s very important to him, and I expect it to be a major point of contention when we start having kids.
*Therefore his entire, and enormous, extended family has all their hopes and dreams resting on my uterus. Fabulous.
It’s an informal tradition in my family that at least one of the boys will have the same middle name, which seems to be connected to the British part of my heritage. It goes back to at least my great-grandfather, but I have little idea of the family history beyond that.
In Latin America, I understand that most people have a “middle name” from their mother’s family along with what we’d consider a last name or family name. Some kids end up with anywhere between 4 and 6 names, due to having a couple of given names along with all the matronymic and patronymic stuff being tagged on. If I remember right, my niece has five names; her father’s from Ecuador.
The naming situation with my kids might be interesting. Since I’m not Japanese, and the registry only records the descendants of Japanese, my wife will get her own entry in the koseki as the head of the family. Our children will automatically be recorded as her descendants, but I won’t be on there unless she officially changes her last name to mine, or I change to hers; only people with the same family name are recorded on the koseki. As of now, she hasn’t changed her name. There are some complications with the US marriage certificate because the name of the place where we got married was recorded wrong. She has the right to use my name as an alternate last name on her passport without any problems, but the koseki is more complicated.
We’re planning on having one Western- and one Japanese-sounding name. I don’t remember the details, but there are some issues with given-name records too, in that we have to do things a particular way to make sure the names used are the right ones. If we don’t record them properly the Japanese-sounding name won’t be used and the kids might have to deal with teasing about it if we live here permanently. I’ll have to get my wife to give me a synopsis.
Neither my brother nor I has a middle name at all. Neither did our parents. Does that count?
I have just found this out about an early 1900s name I have been researching. Two different cemeteries have same middle initial but no name for the listed middle. about a dozen M/F. I found very bizarre or striking. input appreciated.