Apart from the one case you mention, how often have you encountered this problem? I never have, and until this thread it never even crossed my mind that there might be an issue.
The reason for this being standard practice is to distinguish between him and his son Johann Christian, who was a composer in his own right. Similarly there’s Johann Strauss I & II, and various lesser composers commonly known by their full names to separate them from their more famous counterparts, related or not: Leopold Mozart, Clara Schumann, William Schuman, Boris Tchaikovsky, etc.
I should add that I sign my name “R. Lastname”. I started doing this simply because my legal name is Richard, but I go by Rik. And I get checks made out to all sorts of variations: Richard, Rik, Rick, Ric, Rich … So using just the initial saves some headaches when it comes to check cashing time. My own personal checks all say Richard Lastname.
Both my grandfathers were middle-name users, but did the deed differently. My mother’s father was John Harold Lastname, signed his name that way, with all three, but was known to all and sundry as Harold. My father’s father was Peter Earl Lastname, went by Earl, and signed things P. Earl Lastname. His wife was Ada Mae, signed things Ada M. Lastname, so at times they would get junk mail addressed to “Pearl and Adam Lastname.”
P. Earl was a farmer, so it was no attempt at a walnut-panel office impression.
When my employer set up an employee database the idiot contractors hardcoded a middle initial requirement - only to discover that nearly 100 people at the company did NOT have a middle initial or middle name, and NO, it was NOT acceptable to simply randomly “assign” such to us. The contractor didn’t want to change that, but was forced to and found himself out of a job.
I also encountered that as a “requirement” for another employee e-mail at another company.
On the whole, the FAA was MUCH more reasonable than the other parties
Speaking of interesting coding requirements, my work has a number of people who go by only one name. A look at Outlook says that we usually wind up putting a period in the firstname field and sticking the lot in the lastname field.
Working here in the US where it’s expected that one will have at least two names must be fun. I haven’t encountered any of those folks, personally, so I don’t know what their driver’s licenses, for example, do.
Does anyone know what countries with a noticeable number of single-named people do as far as paperwork and bureaucracy goes?
Hamish is actually G. Hamish Lastname, but in all normal situations he’s nothing but Hamish Lastname. Legal documents he signs G. Hamish Lastname. But this is not good enough for one of his banks, which throws an absolute shit fit if he tries to do anything as G. Hamish rather than Gname H. They seriously deal with him as though they thought he were trying to commit fraud. It’s really quite presumptuous of them, IMHO.
If this practice is seen as commonplace, why do so many people perceive it as being pretentious? Really, the people I’m familiar who tend to do this are those in old-money families, lawyers, writers, politicians, and so on; it seems to be disproportionately prevalent among that crowd compared to the lumpenproletariat. You don’t see too many people with names like J. Stash Dombrowski working at the Ford plant.
I started out in life with four names. By my 30’s, I was down to one name. I’ve never legally changed it, but use only my last name and (when pressed) a first initial.
I have fun when on the phone–
“What’s your name?”
“Jinks”
(<tap tap tap>) “What’s your last name?”
“That was it.”
“Oh.” (backspace backspace backspace)
“What’s your first name?”
“Initial. ‘C’, as in Charles.”
(<tap tap tap>) “OK, Charles”
…and the fun begins. Ikon took more than a year to correct my first name from the one they’d misheard.
Who’s to say you don’t? You see it among and associate it with lawyers and such more often because you have more occasion to see a lawyer’s full written name, but Stash Dombrowski in sector 7G is simply known by the name he goes by with friends at the plant. Few probably even realize his first name is Jarvis and Stash is his middle name, unless they hover over him to see how he endorses his checks.
Which exactly supports my point … personal preference is not always the most important factor, and the further removed you are from having a personal relationship with that person or communicating with that person directly, the less important that person’s preference becomes.
:dubious: Yeah, 'cause there’s no way you could have reduced the risk of mistake on this.
“What’s your name?”
“First initial ‘C’; last name ‘Jinks.’”
“What’s your first name?”
“I don’t use my first name. If you have to, just use my initial, ‘C.’”
Or, heck, you could make life easier for everyone in a society that expects people to have at least one given name and one family name and just use your birth given name for official/transactional purposes, even if nobody who actually knows you uses those names.
Do you go through this little dance with every official transaction – passport, driver’s license, tax forms, social security. And if it’s that important to you, why not go to a judge and obtain a certificate that says your name is just “Jinks” so you can show it to everyone who might be baffled? I would think that would be worth avoiding all the potential mix-ups.
It’s only pretentious if you intend it to be that way.
If a young man with his nose up in the air introduces himself to you as “J. Michael Blueblood and this is my roommate from Harvard, P. Fitzgerald Moneybags”, it’s going to seem pretentious.
I’ve never introduced myself as R. Jason H300…I’m just Jason or Jason H300 if it’s in a more formal situation.
The R. Jason H300 is reserved for my signature on checks and letters.
And to matt_mcl, if the bank is insisting that the signature read “Gname H. Lastname” instead of “G. Hamish Lastname”, maybe his account is set up as “Gname H. Lastname”.
I’ve also had checks made out to Richard J. H300 a few times and the bank gave me problems with the endorsement signed R. Jason, but now, I just sign R. J. H300 and if they question it, I just point to the . and say yeah, that says “ichard”, I just have sloppy handwriting.
You seem to hang around with the wrong sort of people.
I had two classmates who used the I. Middle-name Lastname format since I met them in high school and neither were upper class or aspiring. (One guy’s dad worked in a Ford plant and farmed part-time. I think the other guy’s dad was a salesman.) As others have noted, the choices were familial. The auto worker’s son had the same first name as his dad, but the family called him by his middle name to avoid confusion and he started using the first initial just to keep the bureaucrats of the time (1960s) happy; then it stuck. His official correspondence uses the first initial, but in day-to-day living, he is called the diminutive of his middle name and answers to it quite readily.
Grant was named Hiram Ulysses Grant at birth, but a clerk at West Point got it wrong when he enrolled, or so the story goes. He preferred Ulysses Simpson Grant, which is how the clerk marked him down, and used it ever after.
Gene Robinson, the gay bishop of New Hampshire who’s been in the news since his consecration caused a split in the Episcopal Church, was actually named Vicki Eugene Robinson by his parents. They had a family friend named Vicki whom they wanted to honor, and he was very sickly at birth and was thought unlikely to live, acc. to a profile in The New Yorker a few years ago. You can understand why he doesn’t want to be known as “Vicki.”
My first name is “Dale,” but nobody has ever called me that; I’ve always been clept “Larry.”
My first name gets initialized because it’s not my “name” name.
Sorta like C. Montgomery Burns – he is “Monty,” and “Charles” is elided to avoid natural confusion.
I don’t think there’s anything pretentious about that. (“Larry” is as common as dirt.) I am obligated to put my names down in that order, though – and that’s the convention for showing which given name is the general-purpose one.
…and like Hamish, day-to-day it’s just “Larry [Mudd]” - only “D. Lawrence [Mudd]” on paper.
My husband uses his middle name because his first name is, quite frankly, stupid. It’s the sort of name that gets you into fistfights in elementary school, and he changed to his middle name as soon as he could. He signs himself G. Gordon Liddy, but is plain old Gordon in real life.
He isn’t in the least pretentious, grew up very poor, and was simply unfortunately named after his grandfather. (Actually he’s the fourth George in his line, it’s just gone right out of style in the last 100 years.)
I think the reason people associate this name format with rich or famous people is that it is reinforced by an American journalistic standard, which is to refer to people using two names and an initial. This means that you encounter it more often among the type of people who get written about a lot in The New York Times. This does not mean that these people actually use the format themselves.
From what I’ve seen, the Russian journalistic/PR style is to use first and middle initials and then the last name. So back in the Soviet era, at least, you’d see constant references to V.I. Lenin, L.I. Brezhnev, M.S. Gorbachev, etc.
Wiki has a slightly different version of this, claiming that in his nomination of Grant to attend West Point, Congressman, Thomas L. Hamer referred to him as “Ulysses S. Grant of Ohio,” and that West Point refused to recognize a name different from that under which he was nominated.