That’s an awful subject line but I can’t think of a better one. What I’m looking for is famous people whose three names are all the same length. I’m fairly sure that years ago, I started a thread along these lines, although that one was limited to people with 6-6-6 names. Unfortunately, searches don’t find it.
The most famous person with a 6-6-6 name is Ronald Wilson Reagan. Back when he was President, it was common to joke about him being the Antichrist because of that. Personally, I’m also a 6-6-6 person, but I don’t feel especially Antichristish.
Recently, I noted a famous 5-5-5 person: Henry Louis Aaron. Yes, it was because of his obit. He was a childhood hero of mine since I was a Milwaukee Braves fan back then. It was a tragedy to see him go.
So any others? Anyone here have constant-length names? They don’t have to be 6-6-6 or 5-5-5; they could be 4-4-4 or 7-7-7 or any other number. Also, anyone have a better idea on what to call this phenomenon?
Found another 5-5-5 when reading Yo-Yo Ma’s wikipage: Henry Louis Gates.
BTW, the constant-length name phenomenon can be found in other things besides people’s names. For example, there’s The Old Man and the Sea which has 6 words of length 3 and All’s Well that Ends Well has 5 words of length 4.
I’ve often wondered why so many Henry Louises what with these two, Gehrig and Mencken. I can’t find any famous examples from history. Do they just go together well (tres bien ensemble)?
This one is kind of obscure but “Ronald Wilson Reagan” reminded me of it. There was an artist named Donald Roller Wilson who did a few of the late-career Frank Zappa album covers.
It occurs quite easily with Chinese names, because most names are three characters, and each character is a single syllable transliterated with a few letters.
I’ll note that two of the names are often run together (as on Wikipedia): Deng Xiaoping. That’s a problem when names have to be transliterated, so I think I’ll just not count transliterated names. Yo Yo Ma, since he’s lived his entire life in the US, is not a transliterated name.
A similar case is Sacha Baron Cohen (a 5-5-5). Baron Cohen is a double-barreled last name and his middle name is Noam. I’ll probably not count them.
Excluding transliterations of Chinese three character names seems fine, since as I said it is much less remarkable that they have the properties you are looking for. But it’s a bit of a stretch to give Yo-yo Ma a pass just because he has never lived in China. His parents gave him a name that consisted of three Chinese characters, writing his name in arabic letters is obviously a transliteration of that; and just as Xiaoping is often run together, he himself writes his name hyphenated as Yo-yo.