Middle name pride day
Encyclopedia
Middle Name Pride Day is a day to celebrate middle name
Middle name
People's names in several cultures include one or more additional names placed between the first given name and the surname. In Canada and the United States all such names are specifically referred to as middle name; in most European countries they would simply be regarded as second, third, etc....

s. MNPD is celebrated as other than a legal or civic holiday
Civic holiday
A civic holiday, civil holiday, public holiday, legal holiday, or work holiday is a day that is legally recognized and celebrated as a holiday in a particular sovereign state or jurisdictional subdivision of such, e.g., a state or a province...

. Middle Name Pride Day occurs in March on the Friday of Celebrate Your Name Week
Celebrate Your Name Week
Celebrate Your Name Week is a holiday established in 1997 by American onomatology hobbyist Jerry Hill. Hill prescribed the first full week in March as a week for everyone worldwide to embrace and celebrate his or her name. It's also a week for appreciating names in general, and to have fun...

 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
Surname
A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...

. MNPD is noted across the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 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).

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
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

'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
Dale Earnhardt
Ralph Dale Earnhardt, Sr. was an American race car driver, best known for his involvement in stock car racing for NASCAR...

, Robert Ted Turner
Ted Turner
Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...

, Dorothy Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway is an American actress.Dunaway won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Network after receiving previous nominations for the critically acclaimed films Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown...

 and John Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...

. See a list of more examples http://middlenamepride.blogspot.com/2008/02/list-of-dangerous-people-who-refused-to.html
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