554
TIL that the “S” in “Harry S. Truman” isn’t an abbreviation. His middle name was just “S”.
(en.wikipedia.org)
S and a dot apparently.
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
554 points (99.1% liked)
Today I Learned
17543 readers
345 users here now
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I used to work with a guy that was from China. He only had a first in a last name. He was going to college here and the college required everyone to have a middle initial as part of their login. They just used his last initial as his middle initial.
Poor Alex Song (A.S.S.)
I knew that middle names are common in the US but I didn't know it's so deep in the culture
load more comments
(1 replies)
I've usually seen NMN used for no middle name.
load more comments
(9 replies)
I had a friend like this in college. His name was AJ. That's it. Just the letters.
Everyone in the department spent ages trying to guess what it stood for. I managed to glance his ID when we got lunch together once. His name was just AJ. There weren't even periods marking it as an abbreviation.
Still haven't told anyone though
load more comments
(9 replies)
J Moore, the Moore in the wildly used Boyer-Moore string search algorithm, has a first name of a single letter, J. It's not an abbreviation.
Moore enjoys rock climbing.[6]
This might be the most concise paragraph I've ever seen on Wikipedia!
Monkey D. Luffy type shit
That also reminds me of this one public speaker back in 30 A.D. Jesus H Christ. Apparently the H is just an H. Who woulda thought.
I thought H stood for Harold. As in, "our father, who art in heaven, Harold be thy name..."
load more comments
(2 replies)
Homer Jay Simpson Or Homer J. Simpson
If his name is S why is there a period... like an abbreviation.
Because sometimes they insist on abbreviating. It is just a stupid abbreviation.
People are used to adding periods so they just add it in.
Source: My middle name is a letter.
Y?
Y not?
Y not and x not is not y or x.
I'm skeptical. This could be true, or AI generated nonsense. It does link to a source, but I can't verify the source.
You can’t trust a historian’s biography or his official museum‽ Don’t trust TechSpot’s exaggerated headlines.
“I do my own research” is a short walk away from “I trust only my own sources”
In case you were referring to me, how was my comment any of that?
not you, the person you were commenting about.
This is the reference. It's a dotgov.
To be fair to the person above, that's actually the source given for how Truman wrote his own name, not for the S not standing for anything. The reference for that is number 8, which is a book rather than a website. That said, the one you linked does back up the S not standing for anything anyway
Speaking of number 8...
That she chose it herself and is responsible for a lot of unicode's emojis says to me that she was this close to being Jennifer 🙏 Lee or similar
I had no idea about the emoji thing until I read that. I just know her as an author.
A friend in high school had a middle name of "J"
My father's middle name is J. Just the letter. His father's name was JQ, just the letters.
There's also Ulysses S. Grant. The "S" was apparently just a mistake on his enrollment at West Point. His birth name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. He tried to switch his first and middle names, but ended up with the initials USG instead of UHG.
And then there's the odd case of "Thomas a Becket." Thomas Beket was never called Thomas a Becket in his lifetime. He apparently went by many names, one of which was "Beket," but never "a Becket."
https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2023/research/thomas-a-becket-study/
Is this the genesis of British "humour"? Thomas, a Becket, even got the name in the time of Shakespeare.
Waiting for somebody to eviscerate me over British history, cause all I know is Monty Python.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)