Harry S. Truman, 33rd president of the United States was born on May 8th 1884. His parents, John Anderson Truman and Martha Ellen Truman, couldn’t decide on a suitable name for their bouncing baby boy. Eventually the Trumans chose to name their boy “Harry” after his maternal uncle, Harrison Young. Unable to decide between a middle name honoring Harry’s maternal grandfather (Solomon Young) or his paternal grandfather (Anderson Shipp Truman), John and Martha opted not to give little Harry a middle name at all and settled on something that could represent either grandparent: the letter ‘S’ by itself. Although the ‘S’ was not technically an abbreviation and therefore did not need to be followed by a period, Truman’s full name was generally rendered as ‘Harry S. Truman’ during his lifetime and signed his name with a period after the ‘S’. |