You say they're friends but you've never met?

You shouldn't complain about having no middle name. I have two.
I was named after my grandfather, who was dying of cancer when I was born. So the first name I was supposed to have, became my first middle name. It's been a paperwork nightmare. My whole name doesn't fit on forms. My first social security card had only one middle name, and my wife was not included -she was married to the man with two middle names-; my driver's license has my first name shortened, followed by two initials, etcetera.
None of my children have middle names, and they like it.
The only time my long name was useful was when a restaurant gave a 1% discount for every letter in your full name. I got 26%.

That's funny. I know some people with more than one middle name but most of them start with Maria...

my first name means honey bee.
My middle name is a common name given to cherokee women who were of high social standing.

if there's such a thing as reincarnation I always wanted to come back as a drone bee....

Re: You say they're friends but you've never met?


Well, I don't really think that I am your internet friend, but here goes:

My name is Mariko, after the character in Shogun. It is a Japanese name and can translate as "child who always tells the truth." As such, my parents wanted me to have both the qualities of the showgun character and the name, and I have been raised as a very honest person. I have difficulty telling even the smallest lies, and one of the goals of my life is a personal quest for truth and self-improvement.

SheWolf, I'm 1/16 Cherokee. I got a little bit of the looks, but not much else.

Apparently, you got your wish, bear.

Re: You say they're friends but you've never met?


Perhaps my favorite novel!

Great name!

I was named after my two grandfathers.

A funny story came in high school, a girl who knew me called me Joe. One day I told her my two last names (García González) and they are very popular here in Mexico. So then she tells me: "at least you don't have a name like José"...

This is what I get for leaving a thread run wild for a day...

Okay, I'm keeping good notes.
Australia is coming to NYC some time in 2005. We shall get him drunk or find him a wife, one or the other, his choice.

Phoenix32890 arrives in sweaty July, just in time to be taken to the boat, eh, Frank??
And the Prince will return, the bearer of light, and the will be some light shone upon the city that never sleeps.

Noddy24: please come. por favor. please.

{I told my wife that I had invited everyone from A2K to come visit New York City and she said that means I owe anyone who shows up dinner and a drink. Sounds good to me, there's only ten thousand of you and half of you won't show up.)

Gus: jesus, Vermont. Okay, I'm coming there but only if I can hitchhike up and back.

FreeDuck: I am fascinated by the 'no middle name' idea. I had no idea that that was another burden that women have and share and now I want to know much much more.

ehbeth: my only note was 'who was terry doo's'...so how was Terry Doo's??? and when are you arriving at Kennedy Airport??

Dagmarka: Dagmarka may mean Morning Star but Mata Hari means "eye of the day" Mata_ eye hari _day in Indonesian. The eye of the day is the Sun. So MataHari means the sun. I am one of the few USAF interperters of Indonesian to actually remember anything I was taught in language school. Come to New York. We shall eat some Indo food and argue about the meaning of Dagmar, who was a heroine of mine from the age of six.

Willow-Tl: we are not as scary as you think. Okay, Frank IS as scary as you think but I will keep him busy by sending him up to the bar every few minutes while you and I (Hey Lola and Blatham may make an appearance too) catch up. be not afraid.

Sozobe: ANOTHER no middle name, what the hey? and now you use your "old last name." The same as several of my wives-- and the current one, the one I shall be with forever, shares the same thing. Odd. I never knew this, or if I did I didn't pay it any attention. My wife uses her maiden name as her middle name but that is to give some further life to her father's family name which is rare and disappearing from the face of the earth.

Bi-polar Bear: your mom named you after a name she liked, that's a pretty good start for a baby and it means Crown what could be better than that...... hey wouldn't Crown make a great metal band name???
Growl,,

Cinnesthiesia: I wanted to look up Synesthesia but first I wanted to know when you are coming to the city, ok? that first first and then we do the serious stuff analysis and all.

I'm getting sleepy.

Calamity Jane: I'm starting a contest.


Okay. What four letter first name is unpronounecable. ???

Shewolfnm: one : I thought you were in New Mexico. Two: I'll have to go the Austin by way of being dragged by wild horses, no visits to Texas unless it's to see my littlest kiddo in Dallas.

littleK: Yeah, Christina Khristina kristininita...... O, and I LOVE that you have your grandmother's nickname embedded there in your name.. you are so lucky.


Roger and JpinMilwaukee : I have you done for coming to NYC but when?

Sarah: We would love to meet your daughter Ruth..... is her middle name Lucretia too>>>??

Seed: oh oh, I have to go back and see what you wrote....something about blank blank and that led to to Fbaezer's two middle names which I have always been jealous of .... all those people with four or six or eight names ... to be ....to chose from.....to become.

If I can find it I want to share Maple ...it's about naming names.

Joe (jonathan jo nathan joe nation Martin {for Grandad}) Nation

Joe, you got 5 pages out of this topic. Well done! I got 7 pages out of the country that produces the most beautiful women. I am not sure what is happening. We both usually get zero responses to new topics. Must be christmas!!

Maple

By Robert Frost

Her teacher's certainty it must be Mabel
Made Maple first take notice of her name.
She asked her father and he told her, "Maple?-
Maple is right."
"But teacher told the school
There's no such name."
"Teachers don't know as much
As fathers about children, you tell teacher.
You tell her that it's M-A-P-L-E.
You ask her if she knows a maple tree.
Well, you were named after a maple tree.
Your mother named you. You and she just saw
Each other in passing in the room upstairs,
One coming this way into life, and one
Going the other out of life?-you know?
So you can't have much recollection of her.
She had been having a long look at you.
She put her finger in your cheek so hard
It must have made your dimple there, and said,
'Maple.' I said it too: 'Yes, for her name.'
She nodded. So we're sure there's no mistake.
I don't know what she wanted it to mean,
But it seems like some word she left to bid you
Be a good girl?-be like a maple tree.
How like a maple tree's for us to guess.
Or for a little girl to guess sometime.
Not now?-at least I shouldn't try too hard now.
By and by I will tell you all I know
About the different trees, and something, too,
About your mother that perhaps may help."
Dangerous self-arousing words to sow.
Luckily all she wanted of her name then
Was to rebuke her teacher with it next day,
And give the teacher a scare as from her father.
Anything further had been wasted on her,
Or so he tried to think to avoid blame.
She would forget it. She all but forgot it.
What he sowed with her slept so long a sleep,
And came so near death in the dark of years,
That when it woke and came to life again
The flower was different from the parent seed.
It carne back vaguely at the glass one day,
As she stood saying her name over aloud,
Striking it gently across her lowered eyes
To make it go well with the way she looked.
What was it about her name? Its strangeness lay
In having too much meaning. Other names,
As Lesley, Carol, Irma, Marjorie,
Signified nothing. Rose could have a meaning,
But hadn't as it went. (She knew a Rose.)
This difference from other names it was
Made people notice it?-and notice her.
(They either noticed it, or got it wrong.)
Her problem was to find out what it asked
In dress or manner of the girl who bore it.
If she could form some notion of her mother?-
What she bad thought was lovely, and what good.
This was her mother's childhood home;
The house one story high in front, three stories
On the end it presented to the road.
(The arrangement made a pleasant sunny cellar.)
Her mother's bedroom was her father's still,
Where she could watch her mother's picture fading.
Once she found for a bookmark in the Bible
A maple leaf she thought must have been laid
In wait for her there. She read every word
Of the two pages it was pressed between,
As if it was her mother speaking to her.
But forgot to put the leaf back in closing
And lost the place never to read again.
She was sure, though, there had been nothing in it.

So she looked for herself, as everyone
Looks for himself, more or less outwardly.
And her self-seeking, fitful though it was,
May still have been what led her on to read,
And think a little, and get some city schooling.
She learned shorthand, whatever shorthand may
Have had to do with it--she sometimes wondered.
So, till she found herself in a strange place
For the name Maple to have brought her to,
Taking dictation on a paper pad
And, in the pauses when she raised her eyes,
Watching out of a nineteenth story window
An airship laboring with unshiplike motion
And a vague all-disturbing roar above the river
Beyond the highest city built with hands.
Someone was saying in such natural tones
She almost wrote the words down on her knee,
"Do you know you remind me of a tree--
A maple tree?"

"Because my name is Maple?"
"Isn't it Mabel? I thought it was Mabel."

"No doubt you've heard the office call me Mabel.
I have to let them call me what they like."

They were both stirred that he should have divined
Without the name her personal mystery.
It made it seem as if there must be something
She must have missed herself. So they were married,
And took the fancy home with them to live by.

They went on pilgrimage once to her father's
(The house one story high in front, three stories
On the side it presented to the road)
To see if there was not some special tree
She might have overlooked. They could find none,
Not so much as a single tree for shade,
Let alone grove of trees for sugar orchard.
She told him of the bookmark maple leaf
In the big Bible, and all she remembered
of the place marked with it?-"Wave offering,
Something about wave offering, it said."

"You've never asked your father outright, have you?"

"I have, and been Put off sometime, I think."
(This was her faded memory of the way
Once long ago her father had put himself off.)
"Because no telling but it may have been
Something between your father and your mother
Not meant for us at all."
"Not meant for me?
Where would the fairness be in giving me
A name to carry for life and never know
The secret of?"
"And then it may have been
Something a father couldn't tell a daughter
As well as could a mother. And again
It may have been their one lapse into fancy
'Twould be too bad to make him sorry for
By bringing it up to him when be was too old.
Your father feels us round him with our questing,
And holds us off unnecessarily,
As if he didn't know what little thing
Might lead us on to a discovery.
It was as personal as be could be
About the way he saw it was with you
To say your mother, bad she lived, would be
As far again as from being born to bearing."

"Just one look more with what you say in mind,
And I give up"; which last look came to nothing.
But though they now gave up the search forever,
They clung to what one had seen in the other
By inspiration. It proved there was something.
They kept their thoughts away from when the maples
Stood uniform in buckets, and the steam
Of sap and snow rolled off the sugarhouse.
When they made her related to the maples,
It was the tree the autumn fire ran through
And swept of leathern leaves, but left the bark
Unscorched, unblackened, even, by any smoke.
They always took their holidays in autumn.
Once they came on a maple in a glade,
Standing alone with smooth arms lifted up,
And every leaf of foliage she'd worn
Laid scarlet and pale pink about her feet.
But its age kept them from considering this one.
Twenty-five years ago at Maple's naming
It hardly could have been a two-leaved seedling
The next cow might have licked up out at pasture.
Could it have been another maple like it?
They hovered for a moment near discovery,
Figurative enough to see the symbol,
But lacking faith in anything to mean
The same at different times to different people.
Perhaps a filial diffidence partly kept them
From thinking it could be a thing so bridal.
And anyway it came too late for Maple.
She used her hands to cover up her eyes.

"We would not see the secret if we could now:
We are not looking for it any more."

Thus had a name with meaning, given in death,
Made a girl's marriage, and ruled in her life.
No matter that the meaning was not clear.
A name with meaning could bring up a child,
Taking the child out of the parents' hands.
Better a meaningless name, I should say,
As leaving more to nature and happy chance.
Name children some names and see what you do.

There's a lovely young woman at work named Hedwiga. My colleague insists on referring to her as Edwina. <sigh>

Well, in a way it's nice to have an unusual name.
People always remember you, and it's nice to be recognized
immediately (on the phone for instance).

My first and middle names, Charles Mitchell, derive from my grandfathers. The names combined mean strong man like god.

I have met Joe Nation up close and personal, He has more middle names than you can shake a stick at.

when i shake a stick i can shake it at quite a few things

Joe, I wish we could have spent more time with you and the others in NYC. Every meeting I've had with a2kers has been thoroughly enjoyable. Maybe because we tend to write honestly, that comes through when we meet in person and provides a comfort level that would never be there in other first meetings.

I, too, have no middle name. Considering those on this thread who also have no middle name, I feel in good company. Using your maiden name as a middle name once you get married (if you take on your husband's name) will make it easier for your descendants to find you and to be able to attribute to you any writing or anything else you may do for which you would like to be remembered.

There is an old saying: "Anonymous was a woman."
Too true. Women disappear when they marry. History, geneology, any kind of research on women from history is next to impossible unless they continued to be identified by their maiden names after marriage--perhaps because of a famous family. This is a long-winded way of encouraging women to use their maiden names as middle names--if you want to be credited in history books for all your extraordinary deeds.

BTW, I love that Robert Frost poem.

I love that poem too.

I also have no middle name.

We were too poor.

When I went into service...I discovered that the military apparently insists that a middle name (or initial, actually) be used...and damn near everything official in my paperwork has me listed as Frank NMI Apisa.

NMI, as I am sure you realize, is military talk for No Middle Initial.

At the time, I got a kick out of this convention...and often referred to myself as Frank NMI Apisa.