Everyone knows there aren’t any women on the internet.
It’s weird how people subconsciously attach gender to people on a message board. I’ve had several people say they thought from the “Piper” that I was a female type person. Something to do with a character on a tv show?
(Others have said that they thought I was a sentient airplane. There are fewer in this group.)
A common nickname for men with a III is Trip which I think is kind of cool but the only III that I know didn’t use it. His dad was George and he went by Geordie. Geordie has two sons and one of them has George as a middle name ending the chain.
A number of years ago I worked with a company in Houston and they had a line where the original guy was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. The man I mainly worked with was X in the line. His younger son worked there and was XI who had a young son who was XII. They went by something like Alec, Al and Alex and they told me that those nicknames went back to the first guy.
All due respect to Miss Manners, that sounds like the kind of rule a middle-schooler would make up when they were trying to explain how all this worked to themselves late on a Friday night, instead of actually doing some research.
IRL, I’m a Jr., and I’ve occasionally been asked why I still use the Jr. suffix given that my dad has been dead going on 20 years now. I reply quite simply, it’s on my birth certificate that way and therefore I assume it’s part of my legal name.
When did Kurt Vonnegut stop using “Jr.” on book covers, etc.? Was it when his father died?
No reason. I guess my mind just read her as a man.
I thought you were a woman for a while, though that’s because I kept mixing you up with @CairoCarol.
Kurt Vonnegut Sr. died in 1957, so all of his novels except Player Piano (1952) appeared after his father’s death.
I suspect that dropping the “Jr.” on book covers was more a design consideration than anything else. Recent editions drop the “Jr.” even if the original printing had it.
I believe that Judith Martin is a serious etiquette scholar and not just some newspaper blowhard. I suspect her description is based on archaic traditions rather than modern practice.
All the people I know in real life named Piper are girls (they’re all tweens and younger). I don’t know why* they’re choosing that name for girls, but it’s a thing, at least here in SoCal.
*In one case the girl is named after the airplane, because her sister is named after another airplane. No accounting for taste.
Or Trey. I meant to mention that.
I’ve never thought that, but I do keep getting your avatar mixed up with @Colibri’s.
And suddenly the name of the preppy Doonesbury character comes into focus.
Billy Cotton [band leader] had a son, TV executive, who was known as Billy Cotton junior at one time. Some time after his father died and faded out of public memory he became Bill Cotton.
in the case of russian composers kedrov they have (father) or (son) put after their names. it is rare to have full sr and jr in russian tradition as you have patronyms. in this case they (in english translation) are nicholas nicholason kedrov.
As in Randolph Severn “Trey” Parker III, co-creator of South Park.
I already mentioned them both.
Between the British and the Romans, enough people are familiar enough with the practice that it probably isn’t going to raise any eyebrows.
I’ve seen a few examples of “III” men who were called Sticks instead of Trip or Trey. I forget if this was mentioned already.
I am the fourth in line to have the same name (let’s say Albert Charles Bookkeeper IV). My family is most recently from the Canadian Maritimes, where this style may be more common, and I have always thought of the Sr/Jr tags as an American thing.
My father insisted when my mother went to give birth to me (different town as the place they were living didn’t have a proper hospital), that she make sure to NOT name me after him, so she didn’t - she claimed I was was Albert after his father and Charles after hers! That particular first/middle name combination shows up repeatedly in my family’s genealogy records over the past several centuries, so she was honouring a long tradition.