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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For our last 15 minutes or so today, think about your middle name, think about your friends' middle names, and the middle names you chose for your children. What stories, what intimate secrets are contained in those names? We're going to end the show on this lighter note. What has us contemplating middle names? It's a short essay in The Atlantic by the writer Michael Waters.

"The names-" he writes, "-can be Trojan horses of meaning about ourselves or our ancestors, couriers have overlooked parts of our identity." That often includes, of course, a family history or a celebration of a cultural background. Middle names can also reflect parent's creative aspirations, or embody values and traits that parents wish to pass on. Michael writes, "Middle names can't telegraph all of who we are, but maybe sharing them feels so intimate because they carry a small piece of us."

For the last 15 minutes or so today, we'll talk about the significance and intimacy of middle names. We'll open up the phones in a second, but let me say hello to Michael Waters, writer and author of the forthcoming book The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports that's coming out this June. His piece in The Atlantic appears under the headline Middle Names Reveal More Than You Think. Michael, welcome to WNYC.

Michael Waters: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, do you find that middle names are an intimate way of knowing a friend or a loved one like our guest posits? Right away we'll open up the phones. What does your middle name mean to you? Who wants to shout out your middle name? How often do you use it or just avoid it? I know some people who hate their middle names more than I feel like I know people who hate their first names.

Is that a trend out there, listeners? Do you hate your middle name? 212-433-WNYC. What's important about your middle name, maybe one you chose for your kid? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. What meaning does it have different from your first name since they're both given names, generally? 212-433-9692. Michael, what got you on to middle names?

Michael Waters: I think middle names occupy this fascinating space in our lives. They're at once quite bureaucratic. You probably don't think about your middle name much unless you're looking at a driver's license or filling out some sort of administrative form.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, just on that point, have you ever noticed that when you fill out a lot of forms, your middle initial is optional?

Michael Waters: Yes, for sure. Like when you're booking airline tickets, for instance.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. It just says something about our relationship to our middle names versus the rest of our names.

Michael Waters: Right. They're at once forgotten and very bureaucratic in that way, but then I also think we have this cultural idea of middle names as symbolizing something about ourselves in the sense of knowing someone. You see this a lot in music and movies. If someone knows your middle name, they maybe know something about you. I was also really fascinated by that trope that you see often of blank is my middle name, danger is my middle name, or bravery is my middle name, which you see a lot in movies. It uses this way of saying, "Here's this secret thing about me, the secret skill that you're learning by me disclosing this middle name to you." I think we have different strands of that.

I actually think that comes from a real place in how middle names are decided and how parents think about assigning middle names. Because they're more hidden compared to first names, I think you actually see parents get a little more creative and get a little more honest in a lot of ways. Middle names are often family names, like you said, but then there are also maybe names that parents would want to give to their child but would be worried about as a first name. In some way, I think our middle names, maybe we also don't like them because maybe they're a little more revealing about our parents or ourselves or where we come from too.

You even see this around gender connotations too. There's a growing number of middle names that maybe don't align with their traditional gender of the first name the person occupies. For instance, Rihanna's son's middle name is Rose. You also see James is a really popular middle name for girls. Middle names, I think, are fascinating because they are a space where parents are exploring and also passing down meaning to their kids in a way that they maybe don't do to the same extent with first names.

Brian Lehrer: Meryl in Port Washington has a story about a middle name. Meryl, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Meryl: Hi. My son's middle name is Scott. My son came into this world. He is a sperm of my husband and a donor egg. I carried Matthew, that's his first name, but his middle name is Scott because the donor was born in Scotland.

Brian Lehrer: Huh. Very nice. That was the way you honored your donor. How about Holly in Brooklyn? You're on WNYC. Hi, Holly.

Holly: Hi. My middle name is King. It confuses people because I am a female. It's because it's my mom's maiden name, but recently, someone thought that my parents were Elvis fans. Some people thought because I was born on Christmas Day that it was a reference to the three kings. Whenever people realize it's King, they always ask why.

Brian Lehrer: Good story. Yes, I guess if your middle name is King, you are going to get asked why a lot. Stephanie in Fairfield, you're on WNYC. Hi, Stephanie.

Stephanie: Hey, Brian. Big fan of the show. Thanks so much for having me on. Yes, I was calling in. I always like to tell the story of my middle name. Are you there? Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear. Go ahead. I want to know. You got me curious.

Stephanie: [chuckles] Yes, of course. There is an heirloom that is passed down to every Maria in every generation in our family. Many generations ago, ancestor was in Holland and she was in a shipwreck, and apparently was a youngster, a baby, and was rescued by these nuns who named her Maria after, obviously, the Mother Mary and Sunny after the sun. Then they had to place her with the Protestant family in town because they figured out based on the ship that had wrecked that she was probably not a Catholic. They placed her with a family in town. When they came to her wedding, they gave her this beautiful, large crystal decanter that's called a [unintelligible 00:07:23] jar, and it is passed down to every Maria in every generation now.

Brian Lehrer: That's a beautiful story, Stephanie.

Stephanie: In our family that name is very important.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Stephanie: Yes. Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very, very much. Michael, do you want to mention your middle name? Did your curiosity about yourself get you on to this at all?

Michael Waters: I wish I had a more exciting middle name, but my middle name is just William. That is a family name. That was my great-grandfather's middle name. What's your middle name, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: My middle name is Jay. I never used it. I thought early in my radio life of possibly adding it to my public persona for just a little distinction or it might sound more memorable to listeners or classy, Brian J. Lehrer, like some people use the middle initial. The name is J-A-Y, thinking of using the middle initial, and then I thought, "No, it just sounds pretentious," so I dropped that a long time ago.

Michael Waters: That's totally fair, yes.

Brian Lehrer: I'll tell you something else. Actually, we're getting some stories like this. Several people texting, "I don't have a middle name. Sometimes people don't believe that I don't have one, and think I just won't share. Now, neither of my parents have middle names, and I wonder if it's something that has become more common over time? Is there any generational evolution of even just how common it is to give a middle name?

Michael Waters: For sure. Middle names vary a lot depending on cultural background too. Our American concept of middle names obviously doesn't have exact parallels if you look in other countries and other languages just because languages are structured differently and names are structured differently. In the US, most people have middle names at this point. That's really something that happened in the early 20th century. It really arose with these different forms of standardization, so you see life insurance--

Actually, the World War I draft was a big turning point as well. Then later Social Security, there is more of this need to standardize how we name people and then also to differentiate people. That's actually when you see middle names become really, really common in the US whereas before it was mostly a thing among especially wealthier people in the 1700s and 1800s.

Brian Lehrer: Here's an old political reference. Listener writes, "My brother's middle name is Stevenson because my mom wouldn't let my dad name him Adlai." Probably born in the 1950s, you think? Amit in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hello, Amit.

Amit: Hi, Brian. Long-time listener, long-time caller. My middle name is Singh. My first name is Amit, as you mentioned, so Amit Singh. I was born into a half-Hindu, half-Sikh Punjabi family of Indian descent here in New York City. I really think of my middle name as a secret little power, and that's because my parents in the '80s, afraid of what would likely have been a lot of bullying and otherization that would have taken place at school, did not raise me as an outwardly young Sikh man, so I never have had long hair or never had a turban.

Singh, which is a middle name for pretty much all Sikh men or a last name in many instances, is really a way for me to establish connection and identity with my father's side of my family. There's also this stereotype, if you will, within South Asian cultures that Sikh men tend to be big and burly. I'm the opposite, and so it's really fun to be able to share that part of myself particularly when I meet people from South Asia who tend to be surprised.

Brian Lehrer: That's a great story. That's a great, great story. Amit, thank you very much. Moving to another culture who you write about, you write that many middle-class Mexican American families give their children an English or American English first name and a Spanish middle name and that many Asian Americans do the same in their respective languages. What's the cultural significance of those things?

Michael Waters: I think that that just comes out of just this larger pattern that we are talking about where middle names are often where you see people's cultural connection regardless of what that culture is to their ancestry. I think there's some element too of, in those cases especially, trying to put the more meaningful and more culturally significant middle names like some of the callers were saying into that slot where it's maybe not quite as visible. You see that really across middle names where it's the family name, it's the one that connects you back to this history that goes in the middle slot.

Brian Lehrer: You write that Southerners are more likely to know their neighbors' middle names than Americans in other parts of the country. Why would that be?

Michael Waters: Yes. I think that's interesting because in the South is where you see a lot of compound names like Sarah Beth or Maryanne or Mary Elizabeth, for instance. There's also some element of Southerners are more likely to pass down first names from parent to child. Middle names have become maybe a little bit more visible in the American South than elsewhere because the middle name is then what can differentiate you from your parent if you share the same first and last name.

Brian Lehrer: Listener tells us this story in a text, "Was in the taxi to the airport to meet our son. His surrogate mother was in premature labor. We heard on WNYC that Nelson Mandela had died and so his middle name is Nelson." Kylie in Northern Virginia, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kylie.

Kylie: Hi, Brian. Middle names are my absolute favorite thing to talk about. I am the middle of three girls. I do not have a middle name. It was very traumatizing growing up because as your guest mentioned, when I would do standardized tests, they would think I was trying to not give my middle name, but the truth is I just did not have one. Both my sisters did, so I'd often ask my parents, "How did that happen? How does my older sister have a middle name and I don't and my younger sister does."

It's because my grandmother wanted my mom to make my middle name my aunt's name and my mom was not fond of my aunt. Instead of fighting the witch fight, she just gave me no middle name, and so I have no middle name. Then when I got married, I bumped my maiden name to my middle name and now I am adamant about my middle initial being included everywhere because I finally have one.

Brian Lehrer: Huh. That's so unusual that your siblings were given middle names, but you weren't.

Kylie: I know. You would have thought that my grandmother would have come back from my youngest sister and said, "Okay, now here's another girl. Can you name her this middle name?" The ultimate thing is that the name that my grandmother wanted my mom to name me, she had already named her own daughter, but I never really understood that-

Brian Lehrer: [laughs]

Kylie: -because it wasn't like my grandmother only had sons and then my mom had a daughter and she's like, "Can you name this child?" She just wanted to stick with it. Yes, it's fascinating. I love middle names now.

Brian Lehrer: You took charge of it when you got married. Kylie, thank you very much. One more text. Listener writes, "I really like my middle name. It's Lowell. My mom had been working for the New York City Commissioner of Health for [unintelligible 00:15:08] in the '70s, Lowell Bellen. She thought very highly of him and felt his name would make a great middle name. It's not a name I share much, but I've always been a fan both of the name and its very '70s New York City civic origin history."

That is the last word as we leave it there with Michael Waters, writer and author of the forthcoming book, The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports out this June. His piece in The Atlantic appears under the headline Middle Names Reveal More Than You Think. Thanks so much, Michael. This was fun.

Michael Waters: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Stay tuned for All Of It.

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