{"id":10562,"date":"2009-12-14T14:56:49","date_gmt":"2009-12-14T19:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=10562"},"modified":"2009-12-14T14:57:21","modified_gmt":"2009-12-14T19:57:21","slug":"an-initial-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2009\/12\/an-initial-question\/","title":{"rendered":"An initial question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why do we use first initials for LDS leaders who otherwise use their middle names?  M. Russell, L. Tom, D. Todd, L. Whitney &#8212; we all know who these people are.  What is the reason for continued usage of first initials, rather than simply saying &#8220;Russell Ballard&#8221; or &#8220;Todd Christopherson&#8221;?  This seems to be a peculiarly Mormon tic.  Granted, there are a few famous non-Mormons who have used similar nomenclature &#8212; F. Scott Fitzgerald, for one; L. Ron Hubbard, for another.  But the majority of famous middle-name users simply omit the first initial.  Who ever heard of T. Woodrow Wilson or J. Paul McCartney or T. Sean Connery?  (Thanks for the examples, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Middle_name\">Wikipedia<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>When did Mormons get in the habit of keeping and prominently using the first initial, and why?  Does anyone know?  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why do we use first initials for LDS leaders who otherwise use their middle names?  M. Russell, L. Tom, D. Todd, L. Whitney &#8212; we all know who these people are.  What is the reason for continued usage of first initials, rather than simply saying &#8220;Russell Ballard&#8221; or &#8220;Todd Christopherson&#8221;?  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10564,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10562\/revisions\/10564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}