The middle initial is actually a relatively recent invention. Middle names first began to appear in Europe in the late Middle Ages, but they weren’t widely used until the 19th century, when populations boomed and people needed more names to distinguish themselves. Studies show that fewer than 5 percent of Americans born during the Revolutionary Era had middle names; by 1900, nearly every American had one.

With middle names more common, middle initials became ubiquitous in the 20th century. A string of seven consecutive presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt to Gerald R. Ford, used one. (In the case of Harry S. Truman, the “S” didn’t stand for anything; it was a compromise of family names.) Writers employed them, including Alice B. Toklas, William S. Burroughs, William F. Buckley and Hunter S. Thompson. Even fictional characters had them: James T. Kirk, Wile E. Coyote, Homer J. Simpson.

One such fictional creation was John Q. Public. A stand-in for the average taxpayer, he was invented in 1922 by Vaughn Shoemaker, an editorial cartoonist for The Chicago Daily News.