Someone explain some names that are displayed like "L. John Smith"

[F.U.Shakespeare]

@AskNott

When Al Franken was still doing his political radio show, he talked about his good friend G. Gordon Liddy. Al called him G., never Gordon.

When F. Lee Bailey appeared on the tonight show, Carson greeted him, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, F.”, or some such joke.

In Will, Liddy told about when he met Hoover for the first time as a young agent. Liddy, who had gone by his middle name Gordon since childhood, had made the appointment as "George Liddy’, to avoid giving the impression that ‘G. Gordon’ was an imitation designed to curry Hoover’s favor.

[SmackFu]

Someone asked how you fill out forms… I go by my middle name and occasionally use “B Scott” as the first name. There’s enough space in my case. This usually works out ok, but American Express did manage to get confused and issued me a card with the name as Bscott. Which then gets commented on as “such an unusual name”.

You can’t win.