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Who put the Graham in Alexander Graham Bell?

Middle names and the stories behind them


This weekend saw the anniversary of the first ever telephone call, made by Alexander Graham Bell on March 10th 1876. Leaving aside the tricky issue of who actually invented the device (others claim the patent), I was fascinated to learn recently that until the age of 10 the appropriately-named Mr Bell was just plain ‘Alexander'. But he felt left out - his two brothers had middle names. So he asked his father if he could have one too. Told that he could, he chose ‘Graham', and received the name for his 11th birthday.

Who put the Graham in Alexander Graham Bell?

This is similar to George Osborne's story. Except there the child chose a first rather than a middle name. Christened Gideon, he confessed to his mother at the age of 13 that he didn't like his name. She said that actually she didn't, either. So he chose George, in tribute to his war hero grandfather, and the offending ‘Gideon' got shunted into middle-name territory, along with the existing ‘Oliver'.

They're tricky things, these middle names, with all sorts of stories behind them:

 

The weird ones

Quincy Jones's middle name is Delight. Michael Portillo's are Denzil and Xavier. Michael Heseltine's are Ray and Dibdin. Elton John was famously born Reginald Dwight (with the middle name Kenneth), but when he changed to his stage name (inspired by saxophonist Elton Dean and blues singer Long John Baldry) he also included the middle name Hercules. Not as a nod to the classical mythology hero, but to Steptoe and Son's horse.

 

The ones that become other names

A middle name can become a surname, as with the singer born Ray Charles Robinson, who dropped the last bit to avoid confusion with the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. Or it can become a first name, as with the musician James Paul McCartney. Macca's real first name was the same as his father's. (Jim McCartney once urged his son to sing ‘she loves you, yes, yes, yes', as ‘yeah' sounded too American.) 

Someone else christened with that first name was Gordon Brown. Yes, our ex-Prime Minister is really James Brown. Can you think of two more different men than him and the Godfather of Soul?

 

The ones that don't exist

Ever wondered what the ‘S' in Harry S Truman stands for? It doesn't. One of his grandfathers was called Solomon, the other had the middle name Shipp, so to keep them both happy the future President's parents christened him with just a letter in the middle. Another reason for inserting just an initial is the Screen Actors Guild, the US equivalent of the actors' union Equity. They told would-be star Michael Fox that there was already a member with that name - so he added the ‘J' in tribute to Michael J Pollard, star of Bonnie and Clyde. Over this side of the pond, meanwhile, Harry H Corbett (back to Steptoe and Son again) invented his ‘H' to avoid confusion with Sooty's sidekick. He used to joke that the letter stood for ‘hanything'.


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London Bus

A London double decker bus can lean further from the vertical without falling over than a human can. What a great way of learning about centres of gravity. The reason a Routemaster can lean so far is that there's a great long strip of pig-iron welded to its base, keeping you top-deckers safe as you go round corners. If you want reassuring photographic evidence, click here