A Journalism Fetish

Newspapers and wire services make it almost a fetish to always use people’s middle initials, the theory being it reduced the chances of mistaken identity. Some stylebooks  say not to use the middle initial if it seems ridiculous, but ridiculous is in the eye of the beholder.

My wife asked, "What's Jeffrey Epstein's middle initial." Turns out it is E, and if you Google it, MIT and Harvard used his middle initial in their Mea Culpas, most newspapers did not. Alas, there are at least four unrelated Jeffrey E. Epsteins on the first page of search results. My heart goes out to them. Middle initials do not always disambiguate.

While I was down the Google hole, I ran across this slate article:
Why Do So Many Assassins Have Three Names?