Middle names

My mother doesn't have a middle name. When I was little, I thought this was sad -- your middle name is sort of a secret mysterious thing -- special! But she was born in the early 1940s in Norway, during the German occupation, and middle names weren't traditional and probably would've seemed a bit frivolous. Why have three names, anyway? People rarely use their middle names. Many women I know dropped theirs when they took their husband's name. They aren't baptismal names.

Perhaps now it helps us distinguish ourselves from each other. With so many John Smiths in the world (actually This American Life is planning to do a show on John Smiths sometime soon), it helps to have a middle name to identify you. Although there are probably a lot of John David Smiths, for instance. And so we have social security numbers, zipcodes, and our mother's maiden name to help the world find us. Which has its own problems.

I was named "Heidi Ruth" after my paternal grandmother, who died of cancer before I was born, in her late fifties, just a few months after she was diagnosed. My youngest cousin has the same middle name. It's an old fashioned name, from the Hebrew Bible. And a friend has "tagged" me in a meme about middle names, so here we go:

The rules:
1. You have to post the rules before you give your answers.

2. You must list one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. (If you don't have a middle name, use your maiden name or your mother's maiden name).

3. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they've been tagged.)

Hmm. I don't get all these rules; they seem a bit pushy. And I feel like I've revealed a lot already. So maybe I'll just let the meme stand. I'd rather think about my grandmother than little facts this morning (nothing personal, More Cows).

Maybe that's what middle names are for? Another reminder of where we came from, or what our parents wanted for us. The secret special thing.

If you would like to be tagged, consider it done!