What is Barack Obama's full name?

I am just noticing this for the first time. Writing that last post, seeing that John Mellencamp sang "Small Town" at an Obama rally, I was about to add that like Scott Walker, Obama was not born in a small town. (The song, you may remember, is all about being "born in a small town" and staying in that small town even though there's "little opportunity.")

Anyway, Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. (Deal with it, birthers!) Honolulu is about the size of Colorado Springs. Looking up Obama's birthplace, I just went to Wikipedia, naturally, and I noticed something I'd never noticed before. I did not know Obama's full name. I asked Meade, and he got it wrong too.

Obama's full name is Barack Hussein Obama, II. II? What's with II instead of "Jr."? Generally, Jr. is used for a son who has exactly the same name as his father (when the father is still living), and "II" is used when the relationship is other than father-son, such as grandfather-grandchild.

But you don't have to follow these conventions. It's just interesting when you don't. For example, FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt named their daughter Anna Eleanor Jr.

The decision to put "II" rather than "Jr" on the birth certificate may not have been the parents' choice.... It could have been taken by the Hawaiian official who registered the birth.

Barack Obama's Kenyan father would have been perfectly comfortable with the idea of passing on his own name to his son - it is a practice common not only in the US, but in his own country too, and especially among the Luo tribe, to which he belonged.

But there too, it would be normal to use the word "Junior" to refer to the son, according to the BBC's Noel Mwakugu in Nairobi....

And then there's the comma. One reason I don't like these Jr. and III style names is that people aren't sure about whether to put in a comma or not. Usage books disagree. I wouldn't want a name that brought along a fussy issue like that.

I'm not trying to make any political points about Obama here. I just thought it was interesting that we didn't know the President's full name.