In encyclopaedias, the name of the 33[sup]rd[/sup] US President is usually given as “Harry S. Truman”, with the “S.” standing for Spencer. Yet I remember I read in a book (with the title “Useless Knowledge Manual”), that the name is actually “Harry S Truman”, with the middle name consisting of only one letter. The explanation for this says both of Truman’s grandfathers had forenames starting with an S, and since his mother couldn’t decide what name to choose, but didn’t want to drop it entirely, she decided to pick S as middle name. Can anyone give information about that? And: If it is true, how did the S. = Spencer legend come up?
I don’t know if this is significant or not, but every single page that Google pulled for “Harry Spencer Truman” was not in English. Maybe your encyclopedia is not an American one?
I see now from another thread that you are from Germany, and I also see that two thirds of Google’s pages that have the term “Harry Spencer Truman” are in German. Coincidence?
From this site.
And then there’s this burning issue.
Sorry, I haven’t found anything yet about the “Spencer” issue.
From the Truman Library site. I did a search of the site and most of the references to the name “Spencer” pulled up are about this guy. The mystery deepens! If this is a common bit of misinformation, the Truman Library doesn’t seem to know about it (or feel the need to address it.)
And Spencer Salisbury fought with Truman in Germany!
I found some links on Google as curwin did, for “Harry Spencer Truman,” most all of which were in German or (I think) Polish, but they looked like they might have been just standard biographical-type things, not any kind of commentary on the story of his middle name.
One other “relevant” thing I dug up was by this guy, who thinks that Truman’s middle name was part of a Masonic conspiracy about the mysterious 33rd parallel.
Would that be the May 33rd parallel?
Hey, yeah…it’s all starting to make sense now!
It is indeed a 24 volume German encyclopaedia, and it clearly gives his name as “Truman, Harry Spencer”. I also checked britannica.com, it states his name as “Truman, Harry S.” without any reference to the S.
Maybe it’s an error widespread only in Germany? What is the commonly known name for Truman in America?
Similar thing: Germans like to cite Winston Churchill; one of the most often quoted Churchill words is “I don’t believe any statistics I haven’t rigged myself”, you hear it here quite often, and always connected to Churchill. Surprisingly enough, I read that this citation was in England completely unknown. The article says it’s restricted to Germany because Nazi propaganda during WW II reported Churchill had said this, in order to damage his reputation.
My only guess is that someone confused Truman’s middle name with Churchill’s. The Prime Minister was, of course, Sir Winson Leonard Spencer Churchill. I wonder what middle name(s) the German encyclopedias gives him.
In my encyclop(a)edia, he’s given as
Has the theory that the S doesn’t stand for anything always been commonly known in America?
Has the theory that the S doesn’t stand for anything always been commonly known in America?
The cites provided by D Marie agree with what I learned in several history classes in school. In fact, I was taught to leave the period off of the S since it didn’t stand for anything (D Marie’s second cite blows a hole in that one).
Truman couldn’t have a middle name becase as every American knows, the only people with middle names in this country are all serial killers and mass murderers!
Seriously, though, Truman has always been referred to as Harry S. Truman, or Harry Truman, and no one’s made too big a deal about his middle name. And in a way, Truman not having a middle name (and the confusion about what it might stand for) isn’t exactly a new thing for a US President. Ulysses S. Grant had a similar thing happen to him, although, in his case, IIRC, it was that his first and middle names got swapped. (Or is that just another lie my history teachers told me?)
That was then; now the only people with middle names are still evil, but not assasins, rather bad young actresses – Melissa Joan Hart, Jeniffer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar…
Not quite. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. Due to an error when he entered West Point, his name was recorded as “Ulysses Simpson Grant”: