What's "strange" or different about US middle names? They're simply further given
names, just as one finds elsewhere.

German Lutherans often use a string of three or four saints: Anna Catherina
Theresia, for instance.

Among German and Austrian Catholics a two-name saint could be placed before the
name actually used, e.g., Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus MOZART
or his son Franz Xaver Wolfgang MOZART. Both were called Wolfgang throughout their
lives.

For truly heroic strings of given names, few can beat the Spanish.

Jews, too, sometimes gave a child more than one name, and I don't just mean the
kinnui-combinations like Yehuda Leib. Aaron Simon, Abraham Calme, Abraham David
--those are the first three examples (alphabetically) >from the Upper Silesian birth
registers I've transcribed. (In all, 32 beginning with Abraham or Aaron, none of
whom have the father's given name as their 2nd name. About 10% of all the Abrahams
and Aarons.)

My mother, born in Berlin, was Hanna Ruth Loewe, and the 2nd name was in no way a
family name or even religiously significant. (Not in her family!) It was simply a
middle name--another given name.

Roger Lustig
Princeton, NJ USA
research coordinator, GerSIG

Evertjan. wrote: