Harry S. Truman Library and Museum
So now it comes out that the ‘S’ in the name of Harry S. Truman actually did have a meaning.
For years we’ve heard people say that the S “doesn’t stand for anything” and that it was “just an initial.” Now courtesy of the National Archives, we find that it had a little more meaning than that:
When future President Harry S. Truman was born on May 8, 1884, his parents decided to name him Harry, after his mother’s brother Harrison Young. But what about a middle name? Harry’s parents could not come to a decision—should Harry’s middle name be Shipp, in honor of his paternal grandfather, Anderson Shipp Truman? Or should it be Solomon, in honor of his maternal grandfather, Solomon Young?
In the end, they entered his middle name as simply S, which led to a never-ending controversy and questions about Harry S. Truman’s middle name.
You can say that it doesn’t stand for a specific name, but it’s not a random choice, either. It was chosen (in a giving-up-with-a-shrug way) to honor Shipp and/or Solomon. It was every grandpa for himself as the hero of the initial. Since “Harry” came from the maternal side, you’d think it only fair that the middle name should go to his dad’s side of the family. But this was all 140 years ago, so it’s a bit late to level charges of stolen family valor.
The meaning of “S” ended up murky enough that other people tried to make the choice for Truman now and then: When he was sworn in as president after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone delivered the oath as ‘I, Harry Shipp Truman.’ When Truman repeated it back, he made the subtle correction, ‘I, Harry S. Truman.'”
There’s a whole separate wrangle about whether or not to put a period after the S. The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum says that you should use the period, as they do. Truman signed with the period most of his life (see above), but he also muddied the waters in 1962 by telling reporters (“perhaps in jest”) that the period should be omitted. The old scamp.
See our full biography of President Harry S. Truman »
From the Who2 blog:
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| Tags: | Dots, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Initials, Names, National Archives, POTUS, Presidential Library, Presidential Trivia |