If I only use my first and last names, I have a common two letter abbreviation. However I have a capital letter in the middle of my first name, like the A in MaryAnn. In Switzerland, this second capital letter ends up in the official abbreviation for my name, when writing minutes.
So, if I would be normally MP, in the minutes I would be referred to as MAP.
I do have two middle names, but I still don’t get a nice word. Oddly enough, if I search my standard 4 letter initial, I find a number of abbreviations. Sometimes I think there aren’t enough letters in the alphabet.
I do know a person whose first name is Patricia and her initials are PAT.
I don’t feel as strongly as you about this, but recently sat on the plane next to a very nervous guy obviously on his way to a very important business meeting. Everything about him screamed “trying too hard to impress,” down to the monogrammed cuffs on a cheap shirt.
My initials are MS, so if I ever end up releasing software out to the public, I can’t use my initials because some bozos out in Washington State already use those letters.
The sheer effrontery of it all! And that’s not even their founder’s initials. How dare they take up two different sets of perfectly good initials? I smell an attempted monopoly. Tain’t fair!
My aunt wanted to name one of their sons something that would have given him the initials TNT and another family opped out of giving their daughter ASS.
I’m sure she could have handled it as an adult, but having been teased a lot about my last name in school, giving potential schoolyard bullies one less weapon isn’t a bad idea.
I never ‘got’ FLM - rearrange the letters & put the one now in the middle bigger than the other two. If anything, FM,L in bowtie fashion is the way I think they should be, not diamond shaped.
The first holiday meal after sis got engaged had a lively discussion amongst the cousins - should her initials be First, Middle, Married name or First, Maiden name, Married name because of of them spelled ASS but the other way didn’t.
I too suffered as a kid from a very teasable last name. Our parents were smart enough to take that into consideration when giving us first & middle names. Thanks Mom & Dad, ya’ done good there. I don’t think concerns about monograms entered into it though.
Which raises an interesting question, since you are fluent in both Japanese and Chinese. Do those languages, or other ones with similar writing styles, have a concept akin to a monogram? Some simplified iconic derivation of a name? Sorta the visual corollary to a nickname?
Notorious B.I.G. is that you?
Last in the middle always always struck me odd too. As you suggest, the bowtie de-emphasing middle makes more sense for English-language naming norms and the format also degrades nicely in the absence of a middle name/initial.
As to enlarged last in the middle, my thought is that in the 1700-1900s if you are a member of the landed gentry or minor royalty, family pedigree and family name is everything. Ditto in later eras and even today except the “landed gentry” of today are the corporate fatcat class.
In those circumstance, your family name is not only what you are called, but it is who you are and is the source of all your wealth, power, and specialness over the proles. From a young age you’ll be told things like “Bobbie, never forget you are a Walton and we Waltons always …”
IMO monograms have been a ruling class thing, not a working class thing from way back. And in the ruling class your family, and family connections, and family assets, are everything. Hence the larger family initial in the middle. That’s my own personal potted cultural / historical explanation and worth every penny you paid for it.
Monograms have long since been adopted by (some of) the ordinary schlubs, but IMO they’re either anachronistic like exaggerated Emily Post etiquette-isms or are about like this:
Wanna show the Jones’s next door or in the next cubical that you have class and style, unlike them? Get something monogrammed.
