The story of an exclusive but lesser-known presidential club

When Joe Biden he was sworn in as the 46th president of the nation and joined an exclusive but lesser known club than those who had come before.

Joe Biden’s full name is Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. He is one of the other ten commanders-in-chief in history named after his parents. Other members of the group are James Madison Jr., Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Calvin Coolidge Jr.

Jeffrey Engel, founding director of Southern Methodist University’s Presidential History Center, told CBS News’ Dana Jacobson that it’s no wonder presidents don’t use the “junior” distinction.

“I’m not surprised that presidents or any politician choose not to call themselves junior. Because what is the word junior but diminutive? That is, you’re a minor thing or, at most, you’re a copy of something,” he said. to say. dit. “So we see presidents who met with juniors for most of their lives, but when they wanted to make a public career on their own, frankly, they wanted their own name not to borrow that of a other “.

The first president to carry the junior suffix was the second to hold office: John Adams Jr.

There are many members of the club in the modern era, including 38th President Gerald Ford, who was named junior twice. Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr., but her parents divorced. He would later change his name to honor his stepfather and become Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr.

Ford’s successor name is actually James Earl Carter Jr., but he turned him into Jimmy Carter throughout his political career.

Former President Barack Hussein Obama it also bears his father’s name, but his parents chose to add the Roman numeral II instead of the junior suffix.

George W. Bush, son of George HW Bush, was long known to family members as a “junior,” although these different middle initials keep him technically out of the presidential junior club.

“There’s really no reason for George Bush 43 to refer to himself as a junior, even though naturally in natural language people looked at the names and said they sounded the same,” Engel said. “Many times, during his first part of his life, he was called a junior.”