Now, I know I have a bit of a neurosis about my middle initial. Once I hit confirmation age I rarely wrote my name without it, much less signed anything. I even introduced myself that way. What can I say? My parents blessed me with few syllables, so I tried to include letters as many as possible.
But according to this article, Harry S Truman had a lot more to complain about.
"Harry S Truman's middle initial led to controversy. Truman's parents could not agree on his middle name, so they settled on the letter S, sans period. Some deemed Truman's lack of a longer middle name as emblematic of his slight stature. How could the short, lightly regarded machine politician sit at the great FDR's desk? As Bruce Kuklick recounted in The Good Ruler: From Herbert Hoover to Richard Nixon, "one frustrated voter exclaimed, 'They say the S doesn't stand for nothing; the whole god-damn name doesn't stand for nothing.' "
Now, the Truman family dilemma makes a lot of sense to me. I have many fears associated with production of offspring, including the possibility that I might bestow upon my child a name that becomes connected with a mass murderer or some other awful association during his or her lifetime. As David Wallis points out, even Barak Obama is a victim. I wonder if there are any/many names that have followed the opposite course, moving from infamy to acceptability.
The fear of poor name choice, however, is trumped by the fear of producing an axe murderer or serial rapist or mime or boy band member myself.
