Most common names of U.S. presidents 1789-2021

The most common first name for a U.S. president is James, followed by John and then William. Six U.S. presidents have been called James, although Jimmy Carter was the only one who did not serve in the nineteenth century. Five presidents have been called John; most recently John Fitzgerald Kennedy, while John is also the middle name of the incumbent President Donald Trump.

Middle names

Middle names were rarely given in the U.S.' early years, however the practice became more common throughout the nineteenth century. Three U.S. presidents actually went by their middle names in their adulthood, namely Stephen Grover Cleveland, Thomas Woodrow Wilson and David Dwight Eisenhower. Several presidents also shared their middle names with other presidents' surnames, including Ronald Wilson Reagan and William Jefferson Clinton. Coincidentally, there were two U.S. presidents who had just the initial "S." as their middle name, these were; Harry S. Truman, whose S represented his grandfathers (Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young); and Ulysses S. Grant, whose S was added to his name through a clerical error (likely due to his mother's maiden name; Simpson) when being enrolled in West Point Military Academy, but the initial stuck and he kept it throughout the rest of his life.

Family ties

Five surnames have been shared by U.S. presidents, and four of these pairs have been related. Adams and Bush are the names of the two father-son pairs (the Adams pair also share their first name; the Bush pair share a first and a middle name), while William Henry Harrison was the grandfather of Benjamin Harrison. Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt were fifth cousins, however FDR's marriage to Theodore's niece, Eleanor, made him a nephew-in law (Theodore even gave Eleanor away on her wedding day). James Madison and Zachary Taylor were also second cousins. Multiple other presidents are distant cousins from one another, often several times removed (George W. Bush and Barack Obama are technically tenth cousins, twice removed), and a number of presidents have become related by marriage. The only presidents to share a surname and not be related are Andrew Johnson and Lyndon B. Johnson.