> Then I went to college, where on a stone tablet, they had inscribed, "Everybody has a first name, a middle initial, and a last name." I felt sorry for a few students, mostly girls, who had no middle name so were given the middle name, NMI.

In my mom's family, none of the women have middle names. They tend to keep their madien names as middle names upon marriage. I really like it now (my name is exactly what people call me - it makes sense), but when I was little, I hated it.

In third grade, my teacher was filling out our forms for standardized tests, and to save time, he went around the room and asked people their middle initials. I knew what he meant, but a lot of my classmates didn't.
"Jason, what's your middle initial?"
"I don't have one."
"Jason, what's your middle name?"
"Thomas"
"Ok, then T is your middle initial."
We went through this for just about the whole class, and when we got to me (at the end of the alphabet) and I said I had no middle initial, I had to then explain that I had no middle name, which confused the teacher no end. He probably asked me what my middle name was 3 or 4 times before he believed me.

My grandmother (with no middle name, just a maiden name in the middle) talks about filling out forms before she got married and putting 'none' in the middle name/middle initial section, then getting mail addressed to "Ruth None Martin". Duh.

Luisa