People who have dropped their first names

Because of some long-ago experimentation with the form of my own name as an author credit, I have always been fascinated by people who drop given names or reduce them to leading initials. I’ve started keeping a list of those I know and have found over the years - toss in your candidates.

NOT to be included are people who adopt stage or pen names wholly unlike their birth names, people who drop, initial or modify middle or last names, or (for the most part) the vast number of British notables of the 20th century who followed the custom of using two initials for their publication names. Thus, I wouldn’t be interested in Marion Morrison (John Wayne), Willa Seibert Cather, or A.E. Housman.

But Thomas Woodrow Wilson, J. Edgar Hoover, Walter Bruce Willis, John Pierpont Morgan and Edward Aleister Crowley? You bet. Gimme all you got.

John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

Sir James Paul McCartney

James Paul McCartney

ETA: d’oh!

All right, then, George Ivan (Van) Morrison.

John Michael Stipe of R.E.M. comes to mind. (As would I, if I were famous.)

J K Rowling

A. Philip Randolph

C. Thomas Howell
H.R. Haldeman
J. Edgar Hoover

A. Clyde Roller (aka “a Clyde roller”)

C. Wright Mills

Kevin James LaBrie

Christopher Ashton Kutcher

Aubrey Drake Graham, aka Drake

Hiram Ulysses Grant

Elizabeth Stamatina Fey, better known as Tina

Teller. Cannot believe I’m first with this one.

ETA: OK, so he dropped his entire first name.

A. Whitney Brown

H.L. Menchen

P.J. O’Roarke

H.R. Giger
Willard Mitt Romney

Stephen Grover Cleveland.

English bequiffed misery-guts Steven Patrick Morrissey

Wikipedia’s article on middle names has a subsection on Some notable anglophones known by their middle names

I know this is not quite what you asked for, but it’s so odd I just can’t resist it.

English actor drops his two last given names (Hoar Stevens), then takes his second given name, appends a hyphen, then his first given name and becomes the quintessential cad…

Terry-Thomas