Yes, “of sorts.” I mentioned that. That was his second career, though. He’s still primarily known as a former running back and sports announcer. And anything else he did will be overshadowed by his murder trial and his robbery conviction and imprisonment.
J. Jonah Jameson, noted newsman.
StG
I am artistic but I use my middle initial not only because it flows off the pen nicely but there are at least three other people in the U.S. with my same first and last name.
R Lee Ermey?
In other cultures such as my own, one’s initials would be considered not a name but a nickname, and the initials someone is known by may be not those of their name; also, name structures or scripts from different cultures may be less likely to lead to initials (I don’t think there will be a lot of Chinese people who use their initials, given that in their own script there’s no such thing). For 8 years, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was called ZP, but those aren’t his initials: they’re the initials of the slogan his party used in the campaign in which he was elected president (Zapatero Presidente). Now that he’s not president any more, he’s referred to by his two lastnames or by fullname.
S. Chandrasekhar was a Nobel prize winning physicist. The wiki page on him gives the S to stand for Subrahmanyan, but also notes that his given name is just Chandrasekhar. In most physics references, he is just S. Chandrasekhar.
The founder of a company I used to work for, T. Rowe Price, Jr.
Nitpick: “e e cummings” is the book jacket logo. His name was “E. E. Cummings,” and that’s how he himself signed his name.
It is very common in South Indian culture for a person to have a single given name preceded by initials. The initials are derived most often from a patronymic or a place of origin, but they are just used as initials and never expanded. Another prominent example is the former prime minister H. D. Deve Gowda. His given name is “Deve Gowda,” or “Devgaur.”
L. Greco?
I. P. Freely?
Dr J
A Rod
J Lo
Thanks for that!
I’m regularly appalled by the number of misconceptions I pick up and stick like feathers in a particularly stupid hat :smack:
Thanks for filling in that information. I kind of knew about that, but since I don’t know all of the details, I chose not to sound like an idiot explaining it incorrectly.
A bit of a segue… I think I’m safe in saying that cricket is popular in India, and this convention of given name preceded (or indeed succeeded) by initials is fairly conventional there too.
That’s just for the scorecards though, APE Knott isn’t rendered in speech in the same way that say, VVS Laxman, is.
But is that how those people refer to themselves? Those are nicknames given to them by the media. I’m sure they refer to themselves as Julius, Alex, and Jenny.
Lots of athletes. C.C. Sabathia, J.P. Arencibia, J.J. Hardy… the Blue Jays have a pitcher named J.A. Happ, who for some reason styles his name that way when written, but insists on being called “Jay Happ” when it’s spoken aloud. (His name is actually James Anthony.) I have no idea why.
Malcolm X.