What is it about middle names? Even the psychotherapist Susie Orbach won’t reveal hers. She has one, but when asked about it, told an interviewer: “I’m not saying. It’s really very ordinary. I’m just not telling you.”

And when Roseanne Barr was pregnant with a boy, she simply called him Buck because: “He’s too macho to have a middle name.”

All too often, middle names seem to exist solely as a source of embarrassment and ridicule. The syndrome even afflicts the likes of Ben Geza Affleck, Kate Garry Hudson, Geri Estolle Halliwell, Quincy Delight Jones and Uma Karuna Thurman.

At this point, I’d like to apologise to Simon, my childhood playmate, who confided to me in infants’ school that his middle name was Rose. I waited until we were teenagers before outing him.

So why do we have middle names? Leonard R N Ashley (no, I don’t know) the author of What’s in a Name?, says we only began to acquire them in the 16th century in England. They began as an additional Christian name at Confirmation ceremonies and were first used to preserve the mother’s maiden name. Later they were often used as an alternative to a common or disliked “first name” or perked up a plain name, he says.

Indeed, some of us love our middle monikers so much we adopt them as first names. Step forward, Nelust Wyclef Jean, Marie Dionne Warwick, Roberta Joan (Joni) Mitchell, Dorothy Faye Dunaway, George Ivan (Van) Morrison and Alexander James Naughtie. Can you imagine politicians being grilled on the Today programme by an Alexander?

If you don’t have a middle name and feel left out, fret not – you are in good company. Seventeen American presidents were not given one either.

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