Scroll to explore events active on this date.
Along with October, May is one of the most densely packed months of the year. It's before the summer humidity and the last whole month of the school year. The weather is warming in t...
The solstice on the 20th marks the onset of summer (Northern Hemisphere) or winter (Southern Hemisphere). Many people, particularly in Europe, North America and Asia, will be embarking o...
Spring has sprung in the north, and the first hints of Autumn are on the horizon in the south. April is the month spring (or fall) gets underway, and it is filled with religious celebrations, including the Mu...
Middle Name Pride Day is celebrated by telling three people who don't know your middle name what it is and the story behind it.
Through the first 4,500 years of biblical human history, surnames rarely existed, and people operated on a first-name basis. Surnames were infrequent in western society until the tenth century AD, and exceptions occurred, generally within the aristocracy. However, most people were identified by their tribes, culture, city, job, characteristics, or position of influence. Consider King David, Erik the Red, Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar, Socrates, Aesop, John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth, and Mary [of} Magdalene. Then a person's name qualified its bearer like a business card rather than today's use of names which act more like a serial number.
The first known use of a middle name occurred in Europe around the 14th century. The use of middle names took off in the 20th century, and they benefit people with ubiquitous first or last names like Mohammed, Joseph, Lin, Mary, and Sarah.
In the United States, individuals can lose their middle name upon marriage, which is why you will see many people with two last names and no middle name. In other societies, generation after generation strings together surnames to trace their family's genealogy and produce really, really long names. Often the wife's last name becomes the children's middle name.
Currently, this event does not have supporting videos.
Currently, this event does not have supporting documents.
Currently, this event does not have supporting images.