Via Norm, an article on books read and unread. It wasn’t the article itself but the author that caught my eye: G. Tracy Mehan III (or, as they write it, G. Tracy Mehan, III. I didn’t know a comma was required). And I thought, that’s funny: you don’t see that so much any more.
It’s always struck us British as slightly risible, this “the second” or “the third” business. A joke American name is always something like Elmer Hucklebuck III. (It used to be Homer before the Simpsons. Or Hiram maybe.) It’s like they’re trying to establish some kind of dynasty, along the lines of the 4th Earl of Sandwich, or King Henry the Eighth. Either that or they haven’t the wit to come up with new Christian names for their offspring. It never seems to go beyond the fourth though (with George Hamilton IV the only example I can think of), as though the whole thing collapses under the weight of its absurdity after a while. Or maybe it’s more a function of time: if the custom started about a hundred years ago, they simply haven’t got to the stage of Dwight Noodleberry VIIs yet – and by now it may be too late, as, judging by the decreasing frequency of such monikers, the tide of history seems to be turning against the whole practice.
Except for G. Tracy Mehan, III.
And I was thinking, how droll that this male practice should now be taken up by women. There had to be some kind of symbolic point to be drawn here: the unfortunate tendency of certain feminists to appropriate the most pompous, unappetising aspects of maleness. But then I googled the name, and came across an earlier article by the very same G. Tracy Mehan, III, bemoaning the presence of a salacious Victoria’s Secret window display in a local Virginia shopping mall, and I read this:
As a father, I spend a fair amount of time intercepting commercials, mailings, and unsolicited shower gifts generated by and purchased from this purveyor of provocative undergarments.
and had to reshuffle my thoughts. G. Tracy Mehan, III is a man!
Which raises the question: if he’d rather be called Tracy than whatever it is the G stands for, then, well, what on earth does the G stand for?
Mick Hartley 
Leave a comment