From “I Love the Q,” a Harvard Medical School interview with stem-cell scientist George Q. Daley:
HMS: So you have five brothers and sisters?
DALEY: Yes. I was born fifth, and my middle name, Quentin, means “fifth-born.”
HMS: I was going to ask why you use the Q.
DALEY: I love the Q. It’s the most distinctive thing about me. Everybody asks, “What’s the Q stand for?”
From “Politics, Religion and…Baby Names” by Tim Bradley:
Our oldest son Jay (who was almost two at the time) insisted on calling our baby-to-be “Baby Fire” while my wife was pregnant. It caught on and throughout my wife’s pregnancy, our families would ask, “How’s Baby Fire doing?” Although it seemed like a fitting name, we just dismissed it thinking “Fire” was too “out there” for anyone to be on board. But on the way to the hospital during the wee hours of the morning on July 4th, my wife and I decided that “Fire” as a middle name seemed appropriate. It will forever link our sons since it was Jay’s idea, and it captures the memories and emotions we felt throughout the pregnancy. There’s the July 4th fireworks tie-in as well. And let’s face it “Fire” as a middle name is only one step away from “Danger” as the coolest name ever.
From H. L. Mencken’s 1919 book The American Language:
The religious obsession of the New England colonists is also kept in mind by the persistence of Biblical names: Ezra, Hiram, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Elijah, Elihu, and so on. These names excite the derision of the English; an American comic character, in an English play or novel, always bears one of them.