What did the "S" represent in this persons name? also what name was he born with?

His real name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. Some people think that the "S" stands for "Simpson", but he said that is stood for nothing.

[This message was edited by jell8 on 08-02-02 at 11:14 AM.]

[This message was edited by jell8 on 08-02-02 at 11:15 AM.]

While I have read that explanation ( that the "S" stood for nothing), I have more often read that it indeed stood for "Simpson," his mother's maiden name. A check of online sources revealed that Simpson is usually given, and Grolier/Encyclopedia Americana gives the explanation that the letter from a cingressman appointing Grant to West Point mistakenly gave his name as Ulysses Simpson Grant reather than the correct Hiram Ulysses Grant, and that Grant saw the inevitability of not being able to change the Army's record and accepted it. I think that the "nothing" story is a result of confusion with Harry S. Truman's name. I have never found reference about Grant's "S for nothing" story written PRIOR to Truman's Presidency. In Truman's case, the "S" truly stood for nothing, a result of the inability to decide between his two grandfathers' name, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

Here is a site I found that they say that he said that his middle name stands for nothing:

http://www.mscomm.com/~ulysses/page2.html

(Got this from the web-page above)
"Full name: Hiram Ulysses Grant. It is frequently said that Grant's middle name was "Simpson." It was not. His middle name was "Ulysses" and he admitted that the "S" in his name stood for nothing."

"What does the "S" in his name stand for? The "S" in Grant's name stands for nothing. "Simpson" was never his middle name."

I'm aware that Grant said that, once, when a young man, yet he continued to to Simpson as is middle name. Certainly the Army accepted it as his middle name. His continued use of Simpson, along with his passing along the name to his son, Ulysses Simpson Grant, indicates that the "S" stood for Simpson. Remember, we are not discussing what his middle name was, but what the initial "S" stood for.

Sites that give his middle name as Simpson: http://www.ipl.org/div/potus/usgrant.html

Senator Thomas Morris of Ohio recommends Hiram Ulysses Grant for an appointment at the United States Military Academy, at West Point, New York. Substituting his mother’s maiden name for a middle name, and transposing Grant’s middle name for his first name, Senator Morris, however, endorses the appointment of Ulysses Simpson Grant to the academy. - from http://www.americanpresident.org/KoTrain/Courses/
http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/bios/18pgran.html

[This message was edited by Karrow on 02-19-03 at 11:27 PM.]

D'Greyed that is essentially the
same thing as is in The Harper
Encyclopedia of Military Biography,
which says that was the name on his
West Point application and he accepted it.

Hmmmmm. I think you may be right, Doriangreyed. I concede.

When I was a kid (not too long after Grant was President) I read that Grant himself changed his name to Ulysees Simpson Grant after seeing his initials in his luggage when he left to go to the Point. (Hirum Ulysses Grant -HUG) I was somewhat surprised when researching this question to find no mention of that. I wonder how many other 'facts' I read then aren't really facts.