Mr. President, What's Your Middle Name? Quiz

Answer: Herbert

President George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the U.S., was named for his mother Dorothy's father, George Herbert Walker. Mr. Walker was a banker in St. Louis, Missouri, who helped organize the 1904 World's Fair there, and he went on to head the W.A. Harriman international investment firm. President Bush's son, George Walker Bush, eldest son of George H.W. and Barbara Bush, inherited a more manageable version of his father's name.

He was elected in 2000 as the 43rd president, and has been nicknamed "Dubya" to distinguish his middle initial from his father's two middle initials.

Answer: Jefferson

President Bill Clinton, the 42nd U.S. president, was born William Jefferson Blythe III. His biological father, for whom he was named, was killed in an auto accident shortly before Bill Clinton was born. Clinton subsequently adopted the surname of his stepfather, while keeping his original first and middle names.

Jefferson was a popular name through the 19th century in the states of the former Louisiana Purchase, as Thomas Jefferson was president when that large tract from the Mississippi to the Pacific became territory of the U.S.

Answer: Wilson

While Ronald Wilson Reagan's middle name may show some prescience (Woodrow Wilson would be elected president two years after Ronald Reagan's birth), Reagan had the more typical middle namesake of his mother's maiden name, after Nelle Wilson Reagan. The incorrect answers are middle names of Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and not associated with prior presidents' first, last, or middle names.

Answer: John Fitzgerald and Robert Francis

It's all in the family with the Kennedys. Grandfathers Patrick Joseph Kennedy and John Francis Fitzgerald were well represented with their names sprinkled through the Kennedy progeny. Boston Mayor John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, father of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was particularly well represented in the names of the second and third boys of Rose's large Kennedy clan: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Senator/Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy.

Answer: Dwight

As a boy, Eisenhower opted to use his original middle name as a first name. President Eisenhower was born David Dwight Eisenhower in 1890 to David Eisenhower and Ida Stover Eisenhower. He was David Dwight in the family Bible and in the Abilene High School Yearbook of 1909 (check out a photocopy in the Eisenhower Presidential Library on-line archives), but was called Dwight in the family to distinguish him from his father's name. The nickname "Ike," however, was used by all six of the Eisenhower boys, causing much confusion.

By the time he graduated West Point in 1915, he was known as Dwight David Eisenhower. President Eisenhower's bride was Mamie Doud, and they had a son who died young named Doud Dwight Eisenhower, and a second son, John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower.

Answer: Nothing but S

Harry Truman's middle initial was given him at birth in 1884 by his parents. Harry's two grandfathers were named Anderson Shipp[e] Truman and Solomon Young, and his maternal uncle was Harrison Young. The boy was named Harry for his Uncle Harrison, and "S" to cover both grandfathers.

Answer: Delano

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president, was of the Hyde Park, New York, branch of the Roosevelt family. Delano was his mother's maiden name.

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president, was from the Oyster Bay, New York, branch of the family, and a fifth cousin of FDR. Theodore's brother Elliott had a daughter named Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (she went by her middle name). Both Eleanor's parents died by her 10th year. When she married, her uncle Theodore, then President Roosevelt, gave the bride away. Eleanor's new husband, of course, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and would become President Roosevelt in his own right 28 years later.

Answer: Grover

President Cleveland was christened Stephen Grover Cleveland, but did not generally use his first name as an adult. Numerous U.S. presidents went by their middle names including Calvin Coolidge, Woodrow Wilson, and others mentioned in this quiz.

The Rev. Richard Cleveland, President Cleveland's father, was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell, New Jersey, when his fifth child was born in 1837. He named the boy in honor of the first pastor of that church back in the 1790s, the Rev. Stephen Grover.

Answer: Ulysses

President Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant, son of an Ohio tanner named Jesse Root Grant and his wife Hannah Simpson Grant. When young Grant was appointed by his congressman to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the congressman's office erroneously called him Ulysses S. Grant in the nomination letter. Grant liked the name, possibly for its patriotic sound, and kept the initials "U.S." for the rest of his life. The single-letter middle name "S" would be reprized seven decades later by Truman.

The name "Ulysses" is a Latinized version of the Greek Odysseus, king of Ithaca, wily hero of the Trojan War, and subject of Homer's "The Odyssey".

Answer: John Quincy Adams

The sixth president, son of President John Adams and his wife Abigail, was the first U.S. president to be given a middle name at birth. He was named for John Quincy, Abigail Adams' grandfather, a prominent Massachusetts colony legislator. The elder John Quincy died two days after John Quincy Adams was born in 1767.

George Washington did not have a middle name, but Augustine was his father's first name. Thomas Jefferson also did not have a middle name, but Randolph was his mother's maiden name. Polk was the eleventh president, and Knox was his mother's maiden name and James Polk's actual middle name.