Few things perplex large parent more than picking just the veracious name for their child — and the halfway name is no exception . It must have both dignity andjoie de vivre , and fix the tint for a lifetime of repeating on official class . But what goodness is amiddle name , anyway ?
The advanced tradition of inserting a middle name ( or two ) into a fry ’s nickname most likely began in the Middle Ages when parent gave babe a personalized first name and a holy man ’s name for a middle name , followed by a cognomen . By the mid-1800s , this European use began to enter the United States , take along by immigrants , and began to take on new import . Middle names breathe in by apotheosis were sometimes replaced by nonreligious middle names , such as amaternal maiden name , and by the sentence the Civil War began in 1861 , middle names were give purely at the parent ' discretion — any name of their liking was fair game — and were often aspirational in nature , with two or three middle name feed . After all , a fictional name like Peter Aurelius Oliver Smith carries a small more weight than plain ol' Pete Smith , does n’t it ?
The idea of a halfway name get hold in the U.S. , and by the coming of World War I in 1914 , official enlistment forms became thefirst administration documentsto request applicants ' middle names . in-between names were so much the norm that when computers became routinely used for U.S. citizen documents , they were programmed to recognize three names . Not two . Or four . Only three . If a middle name was n’t entered , the program would automatically insert NMI , which was a military abbreviation for " no middle initial . "
And for those without a middle name , let alone an initial ? design is the Florida key to success . For Joanne Kathleen Rowling , better known asJ.K. Rowling , author of the Harry Potter series , the mediate name " Kathleen " is a fabricated affect — appearing as if by magic .
