Middle Name Pride Day

Middle Name Pride Day (MNPD) is a day to celebrate "middle" names. MNPD is celebrated as other than a legal or civic holiday. . "Middle Name Pride Day" occurs in March on the Friday of Celebrate Your Name Week which takes place the first full week of March.

"Middle Name Pride Day" encourages people worldwide to step beyond tolerance or even acceptance of the name or names that fall between his or her first name and his or her surname. MNPD is noted across the United States in newspaper articles such as the "St. Louis Post Dispatch" and this one from the Oakland Tribune .

According to its founder, the way to celebrate MNPD is to take pride in one's middle name(s) by revealing it (them) to at least three people who don't already know the middle name(s).

Motivation

"Middle Name Pride Day" founder, Jerry Hill, tells that the day was established to give people a chance to feel good AbOUT their middle name(s). "It just seemed that people can tend to 'hide' a middle name. They might do so for Any Number of reasons (e.g., if, for whateer reasons, a person considers his or her middle name to be 'embarrassing'). What MNPD represents is a chance to let a person's middle name(s) receive the recognition that its giver most likely intended for it/them. Its 'moment in the sun' so to speak."

It does happen sometimes that a middle name, or names, might be ignored by some or perhaps ridiculed by others. People sometimes prefer to indicate their middle name via an initial (e.g., "John T. Smith" rather than "John Thomas Smith"). Harry S. Truman's middle name however, actually was comprised of just the letter "S." Some people have no middle name whatsoever, others may have several middle names. Naming traditions can vary considerably, and in some cultures one could have several or many "middle names."

Middle names are sometimes, with or without merit, regarded as odd, embarrassing, or maybe "obscure." U.S. President Richard Nixon's middle name, "Milhous", might be considered by some to be an example of an "unconventional" middle name. Newly elected U.S. president Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein, has been debated, discussed and gained attention in any of several ways.

There are those, including well-known politicians, movie stars and other celebrities, who are known by their middle name(s)rather than by their first name. Examples of famous people who use a middle name other than their first include Ralph D. Earnhardt, Robert T. Turner, Dorothy F. Dunaway and John E. Hoover. See a list of more examples 1

Origins

The specific origins of Celebrate Your Name Week's "Middle Name Pride Day" are shared at its website 2.