A middle name is the name that sits between the first and the last. Her middle name.
It is often a family surname carried on, which is how genealogists trace a line. To say patience is your middle name is a joke about a quality rather than a name.
1nounmiddle nameThe name that sits between the first and the last.
“His middle name was his grandmother's maiden name.”
middle name is a name.
The term is first recorded in 1835 in an American college magazine.
First recorded from Harvardiana in 1835.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Family & People