My grandfather, born with no middle name, was urged by his colleagues to fabricate one because he needed a middle initial for appearance's sake in his field. Everyone used their middle initial in communications. And besides, you couldn't have a monogram without three initials.
His first name was Alexander, and being a modest man, he settled on a middle initial of "G," which he joked stood for "the Great." Apparently it worked for him. I'm not sure if it was a legal name change but he used it for the rest of his life.
In the US, generally speaking, you are free to just start using a new name. I did the opposite, dropping my middle name wherever possible and it has only come up once. I even got my current passport issued without my middle name by accident. (I forgot to put my middle name on the application and it was never questioned.)
I've been asked about why my boarding pass didn't have the same name as my passport once, back when I didn't put a middle name. I'm from France where we traditionally have 3 first names: <actual first name> <godmother|father's first name> <grandmother|father's first name> (at least that's how I was named). For paperwork purposes in the US I had to make up a middle name so I use my second and third names. Say Albert Bernard Charles Dupont would be: "Albert" "Bernard Charles" "Dupont". This way it's also consistent with my passport.
I also don't put my name's accent in most computer systems in the US (é). I have it on Linkedin though, and it trips a surprising amount of automated recruiting emails.
> I'm from France where we traditionally have 3 first names: <actual first name> <godmother|father's first name> <grandmother|father's first name> (at least that's how I was named).
Same story here, I've stopped using both the accents on my name and my middle name years ago, and gotten used to that now. Been thinking about changing my name to officially not include the accents anymore, I don't even like them anymore.
My mother has gone by her middle name for her entire life, with almost everything she signs up for completely omitting that her first name even exists.
I kept expecting it to cause her problems, but it doesn't seem to have. Of course, dealing with the government means she has to use her first name sometimes, but that's it.
Anyone who knows me calls me by a nickname that isn't documented anywhere, for reasons too long and too boring to go into. It's worked out for me, as generally speaking, if someone calls looking for someone with my legal given name, it isn't someone whom I want to talk to!
Yes, that last sentence threw me, as using a name for the rest of your life is a good indicator that it was recognized :D
I changed my last name to my very different middle name, leaving me with no middle name (and thus no initial, alas!). People who have not changed their names overestimate how much anyone cares. For instance, some credit card companies allow you to change your name online. Then they help to perpetuate the change by reporting it to the credit agencies.
My mom ended up using her maiden name, as the health system she worked for couldn't accommodate a person with no middle name.
In Ireland, it used to be common to not have a middle name (although people were referred to by undocumented names, at least in my family). A few relatives who immigrated and were in the military or merchant marine were designated with a middle name of "NMI" because they had no middle initial.
People who criticize the study because it's based on students in one university don't understand that the study is also a meta level demonstration of the effect. They passed the peer review.
I'm in awe.
Other study from them:
Igou, E. R., & Van Tilburg, W. A. P. (2015). Ahead of others in the authorship order: Names with middle initials appear earlier in author lists of academic articles in psychology. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00469
There's a simple confounding reason for this. The earlier authors are in the author list, the more likely they are to be actively contributing. If there's a sparse contributor who doesn't respond, who has many papers already, or who is not actively involved in the final read-throughs, they will likely be somewhere in the middle of the author list and may miss that their middle initial is not correct. In contrast, if you are a first author, you will make damned sure your exact precise name is there, as your impact factor and future success hinges on the total number of papers you have.
“Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg” is a name that almost comes with a prefab backstory. Heir to a mysterious but large fortune, Danish royalty on his father’s side with minor French nobility on his mother’s, great-great-grandson of the most decorated officer of the Crimean War, one-half owner of a castle in Lichtenstein rumored to house up to three Vermeers unknown to the outside world, and of course the grisly fratricide in the family’s history which was the talk of society at the time but has now been papered over by the family’s philanthropic efforts in arts education in the wake of the tragedy.
The ultimate smartguy does first initial, middle name, especially when the middle name is obscure. You also avoid sounding like a serial killer in the wrong context.
J. Ulyssses Smith is obviously much smarter than a run of the mill John Smith. John U. Smith sounds like a guy who is “quiet and keeps to himself”.
Unless your middle name is "Lee", in which case stick with First Last because you're gonna sound like a "quiet guy who keeps to himself" any other way.
> Moreover, people with initials carrying a positive meaning (e.g., H. U. G.) live longer compared with those with initials carrying a negative meaning (e.g., M. A. D.; Christenfeld, Phillips, & Glynn, 1999).
Mine is NMN. I sometimes put these letters (No Middle Name) into form fields for the middle name even though I have a sufficient number of given names to fill in - just no ”middle name”.
That being said, I once heard that the prestige of multiple given names changed several times in Europe. There were times where multiple names were fashionable and times were a single given name was preferred.
Irish surnames with apostrophes are beloved by databases everywhere.
Here in Uruguay there are countless examples of immigrants that had to change their first or last name due to them being hard to write for immigration officials.
My grandparent went from Hermann to "German". We surprisingly kept the last name intact (most were botched on the translation to Spanish).
It has me wondering immediately about specific possiblecounter examples. Would it have that "prestige" effect for more unusual names like say Moon U. Zappa. Obviously fake or unfortunate names probably wouldn't benefit like Isaac P. Daily.
The five studies they base their conclusions on were conducted on students at the University of Limerick, the University of Limerick, the University of Limerick, the University of Limerick and the University of Limerick.
We conclude that middle name initials are a big deal around the University of Limerick campus.
That's a perfect study to bring in response to typical comments quoting Richard Feynman's complaints that psychologists rarely replicate studies exactly.
This actually seems more comprehensive than most. They tested multiple times!
There is a pretty decent episode of Freakonomics Radio around how reproducible (or not) many psychological studies are. I know this is an issue for most studies, but Psychology seems to be in a league of their own with the "reproduction rate".
> how reproducible (or not) many psychological studies are.
Combine small effect size with a complete lack of understanding of statistics and you can be fairly sure that most psychological studies' conclusions are borderline junk level.
It has little to do with statistical understanding.
All psych students are required to study stats, and review the study design before starting.
It has everything to with a more systemic problem - publish or perish.
Students and professors alike are basically forced to run new studies. Conducting psych studies takes a lot of money and time because you're dealing with people. And that money and time isn't always available - so your standards drop a lot so you can just graduate or keep researching.
And so far my experience is that most (but definitely not all) psych student are usually choosing psych over STEM due to their repulsion of math, physics and 'anything number'.
They see stats as an 'unfortunate exam they need to get through to pass' so they aim for a barley passing grade in order to focus on other areas they are more interested in. When they are pressured into publishing something the stats part is once again seen as "the impossibly complex part they need help with to be able to publish their interesting findings".
They have guidelines such as "p must be <= 0.05" so they try to mess with the data until they reach that point. Usually, most of the paper (including the conclusion) is already written so stats are considered to be the last administrative bruden to get trough to be able to publish.
I think this is an unfair stereotype. Psychology is really hard, the system you are studying is many times more complex than many other fields. I am going to have to ask for the source on that last paragraph too, that’s basically slandering the whole field as not doing actual science.
> Psychology is really hard, the system you are studying is many times more complex than many other fields.
If that's true though, then the mathematical rigor that should be demanded from its students must be higher than in other fields in order to achieve the same level of reliability. I doubt that is the case today.
The gp is basically saying psychologists can’t get the math right because most don’t like math and are just playing house to get publications. I am saying many do appreciate good statistics and go to bed worrying about it at night, and the lack of general reproducibility has more to do with the complexity of the field.
In most cases you have to find and convince a statistically representative sample to participate, and that’s so expensive and hard enough to often not be done completely, without having to consider that a statistically representative sample of individuals for many psychological phenomena is an impossible task.
At that point you're just teaching them how to game the system better. It's a lot like anti-money laundering training. You know which people in your company shouldn't be taking it because it will just give them ideas.
The other part is that there are numerous psych and soc courses where students are required to participate in studies for part of their grades, which actively creates stupid biases, which kind of teaches that that kind of selection is acceptable
> so your standards drop a lot so you can just graduate or keep researching.
So what is the point of publishing if you are fully aware you are pushing unreliable results out there? It won't do any good to your reputation as a future professional.
The point is to secure more funding to run better and more complicated studies. If you wait around to publish the perfect study, you'll never get started.
At least they ran multiple trials that all have the same problem, instead of just one?
More seriously, the results correlating happiness and success with alphabetical order of your name have all failed to replicate. I'm going to make a prediction now that I expect this will also fail replication if anyone ever bothers.
Danger. Then you can tell people Danger is your middle name.
I actually seriously considered changing my middle name to Danger last year. However, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble for a cliche pickup line due to me being a dual citizen, and a resident in another, so I'd have to change my middle name in 3 different countries.
I don't have one and just pick random letters or names when it doesn't matter. Then I know which ones sold the info to the marketers. "Oh the place I have the X name to is now spamming me with junk mail..."
For more Irish cred, one can of course include an apostrophe as well as the other means mentioned elsewhere in this discussion. Verilog is quite useful in this regard, because of the way that one writes hexadecimal constants.
John 003'hdeadface Smith. Known as "six" to his friends.
No, keep the leading 0x. John 0xdeadface Smith has the added social advantage of also enabling the 0pointer-is-superuser security hole in older versions of systemd, if one can convince people that one never goes by "John". (-:
I'm half joking half serious with this: that might subconsciously cause people to associate you with serial killers. For whatever reason, serial killers are frequently referred to by their complete name.
I commonly use my middle initial, not to be pretentious, but because there are so many people who have the same first and last name as me. I expect within a smaller pool of names (a culturally distinct region), or in the global space, that's why most people use them.
His first name was Alexander, and being a modest man, he settled on a middle initial of "G," which he joked stood for "the Great." Apparently it worked for him. I'm not sure if it was a legal name change but he used it for the rest of his life.