Talk Elections

"I was supposed to be named Harrison Shippe Truman, taking the middle name from my paternal grandfather. Others in the family wanted it to be Solomon, taken from my maternal grandfather. But apparently no agreement could be reached and my name was recorded as Harry S Truman.”
-Harry s* Truman

•   NOTE: Due to the “S” not standing for a name, no punctuation is needed.

Truman is the only president to have such a middle name.

Just an historical fun fact.

Thank You PB for the historical trivia

;D

But Truman had his name changed later, to Harry Simpson Truman.
Vice president Daniel D Tompkins, however, really had no middle name. He was born Daniel Tompkins and inserted the D during his schooldays, to distinguish himself from his cousin Daniel Tompkins attending the same school.

Where do you guys get these kind of information? Please don't tell me from school because then, that would only make me sad. :( :'(

It's S only.

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Harry S Truman (When properly written there is no period after the middle initial "S" for it wasn't in fact a middle initial.  When young Harry was born his parents couldn't agree whether to name him SHIPPER after his paternal grandfather, or SOLOMON after his maternal grandfather.  The letter "S" alone became their compromise.
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In his signature, he used a period after the S I think.

Yes he did. He commented he did that to not confuse school kids!

President Grants name was not Ulysses S. Grant.  His birth name was Hiram Ulysses Grant.  The name change occured when Grant applied to west point.  His recomendation came from Representative Thomas Hamer who erroneously declared his name to be Ulysses Simpson Grant.  Grant found that he prefered the name and stuck with it.

Gerald Ford's birth name was Leslie Lynch King Jr.  He changed it to Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. when he was adopted by his step-father.

Bill Clinton was originally William Jefferson Blythe IV before his mom remarried when he was young and his last name was changed to Clinton.

I forgot about that.  His real father died face down in a ditch.  He drown in an ich of rain water.  What a way to go.

Hell of a shame.  Maybe President Blythe would have been a decent guy.

The reason that he drowned was because his motorcycle crashed, and he landed face down in the water, unconscious.

I thought that it was his car.  He had a blowout and the car fliped while he was rounding a corner.  Either way, he have survied with barely a scratch if he hadn't landed in the ditch.

I'm pretty sure it was a motorcycle, from which one would be more likely to be thrown into a ditch, of course. But yeah, pretty unlucky on his part...

Calvin Coolidge's real name was John Calvin Coolidge. Grover Cleveland's was Stephen Grover Cleveland, and Woodrow Wilson's was Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents says it was a car.