The trip down the rabbit hole was worth it after all. Ford stands for Rudolph, by the way, which is something I don’t think I ever knew and has now become something I’ll never forget. Biden’s second son, Robert, goes by his middle name, Hunter, - perhaps you have heard of him? - which was the maiden name of his late mother, Neilia Hunter. Robinette is the maiden name of Biden’s paternal grandmother Mary Elizabeth, and Biden has said that, according to unverifiable family lore, the Robinettes came to these shores from France in 1777 along with the Marquis de Lafayette.īiden passed along that middle name to his first son, Joseph Robinette Biden III, who went by “Beau” and who died of brain cancer in 2015. “It also sounds like some kind of miniature bird, or maybe a doo-wop backup singer.”īut it’s actually pretty cool.
“It’s a little feminine, obviously,” wrote New York magazine’s Dan Amira in 2008 after Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama chose Biden for his running mate. “Robinette Biden” would likely have been a problematic ballot name. Joe Biden, a man with a first name so plain it’s often accompanied by the adjective “average,” made it. Would a Tom Wilson or a John Coolidge have become presidents of the United States? They help us distinguish people with identical first and last names and in some cases give those with seemingly ordinary names a distinctive option.
Middle names have a storied history and grow out of the tradition in many cultures of preserving at least shreds of family names as the generations slide by.
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