The other Name of the Day...

...belongs to Arjay Miller, a former president of Ford Motor Company who died on Friday at age 101. (That's him at the far left in the picture above.)

When I first saw that name in his New York Times obit I thought it must have been a nickname for his initials, R. J., that just stuck. You know, like Fuzzy Zoeller. Maybe his real name was Robert James Miller or something.

But then I read on and discovered (all emphasis mine):

Arjay Ray Miller was born on March 4, 1916, in Shelby, Neb., a village west of Omaha. The youngest of eight children, he was named for the first initials of his father, Rawley John Miller, a farmer.

Why not just name him Rawley John Miller, Jr. and call him "R. J." for short? Whatever. I guess after seven kids they ran out of good names.

Finally:

“I always thought it was some help coming from a rural situation,” Mr. Miller told The New York Times in 1966. “You aren’t so perplexed about the world: Milk came from a cow, not from the grocery store. Eggs came from a chicken.”

Is that all it takes to become president of a Fortune 500 company? Heck, I grew up in the suburbs and knew that. I must be less "perplexed" than I thought.