one's middle name
- idiom
- Informal
:
su segundo nombre
- Adventure must be his middle name because he's always traveling to new places.
Examples
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For Jessica, efficiency is her middle name, and she always finishes work quickly.
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When it comes to honesty, you could say it's my middle name.
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Kindness is one's middle name!
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For Sarah, one's middle name is generosity.
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Adventure must be his middle name because he's always traveling to new places.
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For Jessica, efficiency is her middle name, and she always finishes work quickly.
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When it comes to honesty, you could say it's my middle name.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal constituents ('middle' = central, 'name' = identifier) give a plausible metaphor that something is at the center of one's identity, so a learner can partly infer the idiomatic sense. However, the phrase is a conventionalized metaphorical use (not a direct compositional description of an actual name) and may not be fully predictable to a B1 learner without prior exposure.
Etymology
The phrase one's middle name comes from the real middle name that sits between a person's first and last name, so it feels like part of who they are. That's why saying something is 'your middle name' means it is a very typical 'main quality' of that person.
