Captain Kirk's Name

James R Kirk
James T Kirk

Prior to those he had two other middle names...
Daniel
Ian

Then one bestowed upon him afterward:
York

Put them all together, and you just described that thing that's a synonym for what he calls "love".

 

I always have to smile whenever someone says James R Kirk is a continuity error.

The original name was "James R Kirk". The continuity error is when it was changed to James T Kirk".

I don't even think changing the middle initial to T was an error, I think they decided James T Kirk sounded better and just went ahead and changed the middle initial, they wouldn't have been bothered that it would be a continuity change.


About naming conventions, my brother in law has a first and last name but no middle name, for some reason his parents just didn't give him one. When he was a kid in grade school, a male teacher once asked him what his middle name was. When my brother in law told him he had none, the teacher didn't believe him. He insisted that he must have one even if he doesn't know it.

When my brother in law said no, he really has no middle name, the teacher got angry and flat out said he was lying and sent him to detention or whatever. It took some doing for my brother in law's parents to convince the teacher that he really has no middle name.

This may sound like an unlikely story but my brother in law says it happened to him and he's certainly not one to make things up.

Robert

 

I have no middle name. I never thought that sort of thing was unusual.

 

Fun fact: Harry S. Truman's middle name was just "S".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman

 

Check this out (LINK)...

 

My grandfather's given name was G.W. The 1940s Army wouldn't accept that, so he had to make up a first and middle name. Those stayed with him for the rest of his life.

 

Gary was reminding him that "R" was the middle initial of Jim's mother's first love instructor.

Kor

 

When thinking about the name James Kirk it may make me think one of my favourite bands....
Metallica:
James Hetfield - guitar and vocals
Kirk Hammett - lead guitar

 

Gary used his last burst of Godlike power to change the Universe so that Kirk's middle name would be "Tiberius".

 

Before that it was Ribetius.

 

The R on the grave was obviously a reference to a nickname that Mitchell had given to Kirk at the academy is what I've always thought!
JB

 

It's a simple continuity error in real life. But that doesn't affect the desire to explain it in the fictional universe of Star Trek.

I deal in in universe explainations.

A continuity error is not the simplest in universe explanation. It is an out of universe explanation. Things which have not yet been nailed down are part of canon and thus have to be explained with in universe explanations.

Five years?

 

*sigh*
Seek help.

 

MAGolding represents a branch of fandom that loves the show's actual content and wants to work with it. He's exacting and meticulous about it. That isn't crazy.

 

Oh God..... have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy...?

 

Five years or fifteen years, it doesn't matter. Once you know someone or something a requisite amount of time, it's all equal.

But I will grant that Kirk and Mitchell were probably a closer relationship than my vague example. So, let me think... their are relatives I've known my whole life, friends from high school, co-workers from old jobs I still communicate with on the Facebook. Do I know, for sure, their middle names? I'm having trouble thinking of any middle names that I didn't actually contribute to making. I don't know my boss's middle name. I don't know her boss's middle name. I don't know my ex-girlfriend's middle name. I don't know any of my co-workers', sans one. And I don't think they know mine.

We take for granted that Kirk is known as "James T. Kirk" but maybe that's an affectation he picked up after this incident, perhaps because his best friend didn't even know it (in-continuity explanation!). Does Kirk know Gary's middle name? Does anybody know? It's not in any non-canon source that I can find.

Middle names and middle initials aren't that important in society anymore, and will likely remain so in the future. We went from Presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson to Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. No one really knows about the E., W., or J. that used to be common knowledge.

I just think mistakes should be part of your calculations, and are far more likely, in-universe, than alternate continuities or multiple middle names that have never been mentioned before or since (or during). It's fun to speculate about the R., and you're not the first or last to offer an explanation. But the likely answer, in-universe, has always seemed glaringly obvious to most of us.

 

Classic.
"There's the right way, the wrong way and the Navy way."

 

How do you know it isn't crazy? Not saying it is or isn't, despite my opinion. How do you know I'm not the one who's crazy?