Reminiscent of a scene in the first Dr. Strange movie:
Or later in Avengers: Infinity War:
What, no love for Richard Milhous Nixon?
This is in Fred Worth’s Super Trivia Encyclopedia, let me go look for it.
OK, I’m back. The phrase is “Riddle = Strange, Even True!” and the people are:
Jimmy Hoffa
Robert McNamara
Joe E. Brown (This is a mistake–his middle name is listed as “Even” in some sources, but it’s “Evan” in his autobiography Laughter Is a Wonderful Thing)
Cy Young
Unless this appears anywhere else, I suspect Worth was the first person to come up with and only one to mention it.
Yes! That must be it; my brother had that book when we were young, and maybe still does.
Thank you.
You’d think he would’ve gone with John Elton instead.
(Rowan Atkinson/Elton John clip. I haven’t watched it in a while, it used to remind me of Da Ali G Show, but I think it’s a lot more similar to Zach Galifianakis’ Between Two Ferns).
Middle names, at least in the Anglosphere, have an interesting aspect to them. While technically, they are all given names, some are like an extra first name, while others are like an extra surname.
Here’s what I mean. Let’s say Mr. and Mrs. Brown have a daughter. Mr. Brown wants her named Emma. Mrs. Brown wants her named Ramona. Mr. Brown thinks Ramona is a bit too unusual. So they agree that their daughter will be named “Emma Ramona Brown.” The middle name is a compromise - and if Emma R. happens to like her middle name more than her first name, she can easily choose to go by “Ramona” later.
Now, let’s say Mr. and Mrs. Smith also have a daughter. They decide to name her Jane and both parents like this first name. However, Mrs. Smith has another request: her maiden name is Dimpflmeier. She would like their offspring to bear that surname as a middle name. So, they name their daughter Jane Dimpflmeier Smith. Then they have a son. They both like the name Michael, so the son logically gets the name Michael Dimpflmeier Smith. As both kids have a middle name that sounds squarely like a surname, and a very unusual one at that, it is highly unlikely that either of them will ever think to go by their middle name.
My point is that an “unusual” middle name derived from a mother’s or other family surname may objectively be less “unusual” in that there’s all kinds of surnames from all over the world and sometimes they’re only given to commemorate a family member or other person bearing that surname. The “unusual” value increases if it’s derived from a given name.
Elvis Presley’s paternal grandfather: his name is given variously by various sources. Which one is the official one? There are different spellings, Some give him one middle name, others two. Others initialize one of them. One version of his name I have found is:
Jesse Dunning McClowell Presley
“McClowell?” Is this a real (sur)name? Other sources say “McDowell”, which makes more sense. Could the first be a scribal error?
Is his first name spelled “Jesse” or “Jessie”? Did he go by “J.D.” or “Dee” or both?
For that matter, Elvis’ middle name was variously spelled Aron or Aaron, and his stillborn twin brother was named Jesse Garon, the middle name apparently been given just so it would rhyme with his brother’s.
It’s also common, in some cultures, for a married woman to take her maiden name as her own middle name, possibly replacing a pre-existing middle name.
And, of course, there can be some overlap between middle names based on first names, and middle names based on last names. In college, I had a math professor named Dr. Sprows. He told us once that when his son was born, he considered naming him after a great mathematician, such as Bertrand Russell. But then he thought about it more, and realized that “Bertrand” being such an unusual name, the kid would probably go by his middle name. And then he realized that that would make him “B. Russell Sprows”.
He chose a different name.
I went to a junior high school named for a former governor of our state of Kansas. It was Alred M. Landon Junior High School. The M was for his mother’s maiden name of Mossman.
When I married I was in the Army and used my maiden name for my middle name. But when I got divorces I changed it back.
Of course, Worth had to use a symbol and incorrect spelling to make a barely passable sentence; is it possible to improve on him? Going by this thread alone, for middle names that could be regular non-proper name words we have strange, riddle, crimefighter, delight, comfort, hazard, mountain, cash, and true. Of those, riddle, delight, comfort, hazard, and cash are verbs, but not inflected; so the subject would have to be plural, and none of the nouns is plural. Is anyone’s (any famous person’s) middle name “Burns”? Or a plural noun?
I know one family where for at least two generations, the girls weren’t given middle names. They were expected to use their maiden name as a middle name when they married.
I have two middle names and a number, because my great-grandparents decided to give my grandpa the full name of a Hollywood actor they were friends with, and the name got passed down to my father and then to me.
I’m fairly sure that my full given name is 100% unique and noone else in the world has the exact same name that I do.
Marion Robert Morrison, Robert is quite quirky isnt it?
Not a middle name, but Cambridge, MA has a Corporal Burns Playground, which always sounded to me like a particularly grisly headline.
In Montana, during the Senate race between incumbent Conrad Burns and challenger Jon Tester, there were bumper stickers around saying simply “Fire Burns”.