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.^[1] Middle Name Pride Day occurs in March on the Friday of Celebrate Your Name Week which takes place the first full week of March.^[2]

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 ^[3] and this one from the Oakland Tribune ^[4].

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).

Origin and 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 whatever 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 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.

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 Dale Earnhardt, Robert Ted Turner, Dorothy Faye Dunaway and John Edgar Hoover. See a list of more examples [1]

References

1. ^ Amazon.com: Chase's Calendar of Events Annual (Chase's Calendar of Events): Contemporary Books,Chase: Books (Pages 155 and 162 in the 2008 Edition)
2. ^ NamesUniverse | Where Everything Is Possible...
3. ^ Wanna make something of it
4. ^ Pride in middle names takes center stage today | Oakland Tribune | Find Articles at BNET.com