Your Father’s Name
I’ve tried the Census Bureau and half a dozen other places but no one seems to know how many boy babies are given their father’s name and called “Junior.”
The purpose of a name is to distinguish one person from another and I don’t want to alienate the affections of millions of parents who have given a kid the same name as his father but it doesn’t make sense to do. It happens everywhere in the world. Osama “bin” Laden means “Osama son of Laden.” The preface “Mc” in front of an Irish name means “son of.” In Russia, Ivan “Ivanovich” is “son of Ivan.” Just as soon as two people living in the same house anywhere have the same name, there’s confusion.
“George?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
“No. I’m talking to your father.”
Who needs that?
It makes it so hard around the house that half the time, the son is called “Junior” instead of by his name. Or to separate the kid from his father, his gets nicknamed “Sonny.”
The least a father and mother can do for a kid is give him a name of his own.
The boxer George Foreman carried ego to the extreme by naming all four of his sons George.
Some juniors drop it when their father dies but others keep it forever. There are lots of men in their eighties who are still called “Junior.”
There was a difference of opinion about how to refer to Martin Luther King on his birthday. Some people called him “Martin Luther King, Jr.” His father is dead so others left the junior off. I prefer it without. “Martin Luther King Jr. Day” is awkward. Making it possessive is very awkward: “Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.”
In New York, I often take a road named after a well known labor leader, Harry Van Arsdale. The signs read “Harry A. Van Arsdale Junior Boulevard.” That’s hard to get on an overhead sign on a narrow road.
The word “junior” itself is sort of demeaning. It suggests lesser. Junior varsity. Junior high school.
There have been eleven Presidents of the United States who were given the same first name as their father but I don’t think any of them ever called themselves “Junior.”
Bill Clinton was not just a junior but a fourth. He was originally named “William Jefferson Blythe the Fourth.” That would be political suicide. His father died in a car accident before he was born and when his mother married Roger Clinton, she changed Bill’s name to “William Jefferson Clinton.” Doesn’t seem right. Poor old Bill Blythe.
I realize that most of the millions of people named Junior won’t like this and the parents who stuck them with those second-hand names certainly won’t like it but giving a kid the same name as his father is dumb. I wouldn’t be “Andrew Aitken Rooney” or Andy. I’d be “Walter Scott Rooney Junior.” Even worse, our son, Brian, would be “Andy Rooney Junior.” How would you like to stick a kid with that?
From Andy Rooney, Years of Minutes, pp. 318-319.
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