I have seldom given much thought to middle names of colonial American ancestors except When someone, male or female, shows up on a *vast database* such as IGI, Ancestral File and all the knock-offs, with a middle name and an early date of birth (usually wrong), then my *suspect* antenna go up. (I generally avoid these databases, as I have found them so flawed--mainly in dates and places. The English IGI, when names and dates and places are extracted from parish records are generally acceptable, but beware of other such databases.) As the nation matured and became more populated, however, and many persons shared the same name, middle names did seem to pop up. In my own lineage, I am descended from one Samuel Farrar Williams, who, in his rejected Revolutionary War pension claim, filed in Kentucky, states he was born in 1759 in Granville Co., NC. (This was one of the truthful statements in his application.) He seems to be my earliest ancestor with a middle name, and, fruitlessly, I have searched for years to try to determine whether the parental Williams family was linked to a Farrar family, who were prominent in the early history of counties along the James River. The closest solution I have come to is a 1742 tithable list for Goochland Co., VA in which S.F.W's grandfather, John Williams [just plain John Williams, which confuses many researchers] has listed as one of his tithables a William Farrar. (This list appears in an old issue of The Virginia Genealogist.) In a lecture at a (1999, I believe) NGS conference, held in Richmond, VA, I heard Helen F.M.Leary, a noted genealogist of North Carolina, give a talk on how one could determine whether one's North Carolinian had Virginia roots. One of the clues was if the person had a middle name!!!! Another pointer of Virginia origins was if the wife, in a deed executed by her spouse, relinquished her dower rights. Seemingly, this was a requirement in Virginia but not in North Carolina. Of course, one must ALWAYS remember that for every rule, there is always an exception, and those of us with North Carolina and Virginia roots, know there are plenty of exceptions!!! I believe I had read earlier than middle names had been forbidden in England, at least for the lower classes. Discussion of naming patterns is of interest, probably because for every *rule*, as stated, there is an exception. E.W.Wallace