Thanks for your comments, Jerry! I personally pre...

2011-07-11T10:16:43.704-04:00

Thanks for your comments, Jerry!

I personally prefer the full-caps convention since, for me anyway, it solves the whole problem. That wouldn't have helped your Navy buddy, though.

Fortunately, I am told by those in the know that the Navy has a solution for the K problem these days. People who have no middle name are instructed to fill in that blank with NMN. Of course, as a former colleague of mine, whose first name was Ann Marie, discovered, NMN gets ignored when one's first name consists of more than one word!

I feel your pain. I know someone who has been sad...

2011-07-10T12:35:08.814-04:00

I feel your pain.

I know someone who has been saddled with two middle names, Le Roy, and has tried to find a way to avoid the issues associated with that all his life.

Most people speculate that it is simply a misspelling of the French "le Roi" (the King) since the article "le" is never capitalized unless it is the first word in a sentence and "roy" is not a (contemporary) French word. Other's choose to believe "Le Roy" is simply an attempt to embellish the far more common "Leroy".

To avoid such embarrassment and speculation the middle name is simply not used if possible. Government organizations however, tend to turn everything into capital letters rendering everyone's moniker a characterless, boring and common entity which can be just as frustrating.

On a somewhat related note I remember a fellow sailor who had no middle name. In boot camp he was told he had to at least choose an initial to fill the middle name space on all his paperwork. Reluctantly, he chose "K" but ever after that his middle name became "Kay"!

Until we are all forced to identify ourselves by a government-issued number, probably encoded in a chip implanted under our skin at birth, the controversy surrounding personal names will surely rage on as it always has.

Comments on Word-wise: Interesting side note on capitalization

Thanks for your comments, Jerry! I personally pre...

I feel your pain. I know someone who has been sad...