COLUMBUS, Ohio – When it comes to the Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance name, it’s complicated.
The Ohio senator introduced himself to the world in 2016 when he published his best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” under the name JD Vance — “like jay-dot-dee-dot,” he wrote, short for James David. In the book, he explained that this was not his first iteration of the name. Nor would it be the last.
Over the course of his 39 years, Vance’s first name, middle name, and last name have been changed in one way or another. As Vance is presented to voters across the country as Donald Trump’s representative new running matehis name has been a source of curiosity and questions — including why he no longer uses periods in “JD.”
He was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio on August 2, 1984, and his middle name and surname are the same as his biological father, Donald Bowman. His parents separated “around the time I started walking,” he writes. When he was about 6 years old, his mother, Beverly, married for the third time. He was adopted by his new stepfather, Robert Hamel, and his mother renamed him James David Hamel.
When his mother erased Donald Bowman from her and her son’s lives, the adoption process also erased the name James Donald Bowman from public records. Vance’s only birth certificate on file with the Ohio office of vital statistics says James David Hamel, according to information provided by the state.
Beverly kept the boy’s initials the same, as he was now universally known as “JD,” Vance explains in the book. He didn’t believe his mother’s story that she was now named after his uncle David. “Any old D name would do, as long as it wasn’t Donald,” he wrote.
Vance spent more than two decades as James David “JD” Hamel. It’s the name under which he graduated from Middletown High School, served in Iraq as a U.S. Marine (officially, Cpl. James D. Hamel), earned a degree in political science at Ohio State University, and blogged his ruminations at age 26 . former Yale Law School student. These facts are confirmed in documentation provided by these entities upon request, or otherwise publicly available, and were confirmed by campaign spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk.
But the situation tormented him, especially after his mother and adoptive father divorced.
“I didn’t share a name with anyone I really cared about (which already bothered me), and without Bob, explaining why my name was JD Hamel would require a few additional awkward moments,” he writes in “Hillbilly Elegy.” “Yes, my legal father’s surname is Hamel. You haven’t met him because I don’t see him. No, I don’t know why I don’t see it. Of all the things I hated growing up, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures.”
So he decided to change his name again, to Vance – the surname of his beloved “Mamaw”, the grandmother who raised him.
This did not happen on his wedding day in 2014, as the book indicates, but in April 2013, when he was about to graduate from Yale, Van Kirk said. It felt right to use the name of the woman who raised him before she died in 2005, as he was leaving behind the struggles of his childhood and launching into this new phase.
“Throughout his tumultuous childhood, Mamaw — or Bonnie Blanton Vance — raised JD and was always his North Star,” Van Kirk said in a statement. “It seemed right for him to use Vance as his last name.”
Claiming the Vance name also served to link JD more clearly to what he writes was “hillbilly royalty” on his grandfather’s side, shortly before he released a book opining on hillbilly culture. A distant cousin of his “Papaw,” also named James Vance, married into the McCoy-hating Hatfield family and committed a murder that “started one of the most famous family feuds in American history,” Vance wrote in your book.
Vance achieved something of a clean slate with his new name, just as he was beginning his career as a lawyer and writer. In addition to being the name of his book, it’s the name he used to join the bar, to get married, to enter the world of venture capital in Silicon Valley, and when he became a father.
But there was one more name change to come.
When Vance jumped into politics In July 2021, he dropped the full stops from “JD.” He used this abbreviation many times throughout his life.
Asked by the Associated Press at the time whether this was a formal change, or merely a stylistic one, his campaign said that was how Vance preferred to be referred to in the press. He maintained the usage as a U.S. Senator, referring to himself as J.D. Vance on his official Senate website, in press releases, and in certain campaign and business records.
Today’s nominee’s legal name is James David Vance. The AP, whose industry-standard style book advises generally calling people by the name they prefer, honors your request to use JD without a period.
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Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
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