President Biden's middle name, Robinette...

[LuckyCharms]

is his Grandmother's maiden name. I was curious as to the origin of the name, so I looked it up.

For what it is worth, I think his middle name is cool as hell.

[Karadeniz]

1. Well, thanks! I had wondered....

[LuckyCharms]

2. .

[WA-03 Democrat]

3. Very cool

And thanks for posting!

[Skittles]

4. reminds me of Paul Robinette on Law & Order

[StarfishSaver]

5. I only learned a couple of days ago that Beau's full name was Joseph Robinette Biden, III

[Demonaut]

6. the right will claim he's really a woman, I'm not kidding

[FakeNoose]

7. He uses "Jr." after his name, but I think that's incorrect

The designation of "Junior" is only called for while "Senior" is still living. However Joe Biden Sr. actually passed away in 2002. There is no further need to differentiate between father and son.

[csziggy]

11. These days Jr seems to be retained because it has become their identity

Their legal name once established is harder to casually alter, too.

In the past, Jr. could be applied to any younger person of the same name in the same community. It has messed up genealogists to find John Smith Sr and John Smith Jr in the same census district - people often assume that the Jr is the son of the Sr. That is not necessarily so. Sometimes the Jr is completely unrelated and just happened to move to a community where there was an older person with the same name in the same place. I've run across that more than once and had to sort it out. I was sure of the situation since the younger men were confirmed in different communities earlier and there were records of them moving to the new one.

In my family my grandfather became Sr. when he named my uncle after him. Then my uncle named his son with the same name so he became a Third (III) even though my grandfather had died years before the III was born.. My cousin, the III still uses that suffix since that is what his legal name is. It was less confusing than if my uncle had dropped the Jr when his father died and then had become Sr when his son was born.

[colsohlibgal]

8. Interesting

We had a boys basketball coach at my HS with that last name, must be more common that one would think.

[GulfCoast66]

9. So he had some French heritage with the Irish?

In the south it is very common to give a son the maternal grandmother’s maiden name as a middle or even first name. One of my godson’s first name is his Grandmother’ maiden name.

[chowder66]

10. It's very helpful with genealogy. Women weren't documented well.

Many of my ancestor's followed naming patterns which would carry the maiden names of the maternal lines as first or middle names.