The C.Wright Mills Award

When the interview with Labour leadership contender Cabinet minister David Miliband appeared in The Times this weekend I learned for the first time of his middle name - he is David Wright Miliband.

This is speculation on my part, but I think that means that David was named after the Marxist sociologist C.Wright Mills. Mills died in 1962, provoking from David's father Ralph an article beginning with these words:

I mourn the death of C. Wright Mills, bitterly and personally. We had, in the last five years of his life, become close friends.

Just a guess, but I bet I am correct. And it leads me to a new Comment Central competition.

If you or anyone you know has been named after a political figure of any kind, I want to hear from you. Obviously the more obscure or incongruous the better.

You'll have to work hard to beat a Blairite cabinet minister named after an only-familiar-to-intellectuals Marxist author but I have faith. I know you can do it.

UPDATE: An entry: Cristiano Ronaldo named after Ronald Reagan. No word of a lie.

Comments

[David Boothroyd]

Most famously Denis Healey's middle name is "Winston" after Winston Churchill, because his father was an admirer of lost causes (Healey was born in 1917 when Churchill was associated with Gallipoli).

The famous comedian and cause célebre 'Fatty Arbuckle' was named Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle after prominent Republican Senator Roscoe Conkling. Oddly Arbuckle's father was an ardent Democrat. It seems he suspected that Roscoe might not be his.

[fakename]

I was named after the last Russian Czar: Nicholas II.

Does that count?

[jeff]

My wife's grandfather who died last year aged 101 was named Theodore Roosevelt Werner.

[Alex]

My great-uncle, born 1911, was named Lloyd George, evidently after his father's political hero. This is interesting because my great-grandfather Archer Lewis also started up the Tilbury Dockworkers Temperance Society. I have no idea whether this society still exists...

[Recusant]

My sister is called Baba after the Labour MP, Bessie Braddock - BB..Ba Ba..Baba - as she was fairly hefty when she was born in 1954. Bessie remained fat, my sister would want you to know that she didn't.

[Tom Gray]

The leader of my Boy Scout troop was named Baden Powell Mafeking Kirby. Does that count?

[BostonPWE]

My grandfather was born in North Texas in 1884 and named after the President: Grover Cleveland Spangler.

[Bart S.]

My best friend is named Milhouse - does that count?

[Ken]

There was a West Indian fast bowler called Nixon McLean, whose full name was Nixon Alexei McNamara McLean. There was a US-Soviet conference in the news at the time of his birth, which was June/July 1973.

[Shourik]

Arguably the most politically-named cricketer ever:

Nixon Alexei McNamara McLean played for the West Indies in the nineties and early noughties.

Nixon = President Nixon;
McNamara = Robert Macnamara, US Secretary of Defense 1961-68;
Alexei = Alexei Leonov, first man to walk in space (?) or Alexei Kosygin, former USSR Premier (?), I'm not sure which.

[Jon South]

George Walker Bush is named after William Walker, the 19th century American mercenary who became dictator of Nicaragua.

[media scum]

A classic was the late TUC General Secretary Vic Fetaher. His full name was Victor Grayson Kier hardie Feather (and for those who don't know, Victor Grayson was a pioneering independent socialist MP for Colne Vally in the years before WW1, and who vanished off the face of the earth in odd circumstances in 1920. Talk was that he had inside infor on 'cash for peerages' via Lloyd Geworge and had been bumped off as a result.

[Rover]

Have an older brother, second name Winston,born before WW2. Younger brother born mid 50's Lloyd, after Lloyd George. I have a middle name of Alexander, but I'm not sure if that is after the grate or the Great!

[Philip K]

Your own wonderful columnist and blogger, Ariel Leve, is in full Ariel Sharon Leve and was indeed named after the Israeli general and later PM in the euphoria after the 6-day war. I would have hesitated to out her, but she's already announced it herself in an article on her website (lots of good reading).

[Ken]

Shourik - great minds think alike! Alexei was named for Kosygin, at least if the very erudite Wikipedia cricket quiz is to be believed!

[Tomáš Ruta]

I was named after the first President of independent Czechoslovakia: Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. Btw "Garrigue" is not his middle name but his American wife's surname which he used in addition to his own!

[Tom Beck]

J. K. Jerome (‘Three Men in a Boat' The ‘K’ stands for Klapka, who was a famous 19th century Hungarian nationalist and Parliamentarian.

[Marjan M. A. H.]

My middle names, chosen by my mother, are Marie Antoinette. My mother was obviously not a superstitious person, but had read a romantic historic novel about the French queen.