Barack Obama’s mother may have been known as Ann Dunham throughout her adult life, but she was Stanley Dunham growing up. She believed her father, Stanley Dunham, named her after himself after he got over the disappointment of having a daughter and not a son. “I know, it’s a boy’s name and no, I don’t like it. I mean, would you like to be called Stanley?” Dunham’s schoolmate Elaine Johnson recalled her saying in a 2007 Chicago Tribune interview. “But my dad wanted a boy and he got me. And the name ‘Stanley’ made him feel better, I guess.'”
However, many of her family members disagreed with her version. According to Obama’s uncle, Ann’s mother was a movie fan and drew inspiration for her daughter’s name after watching “In This Our Life,” featuring Bette Davis as Stanley Timberlake. “A woman named Stanley: ‘Madelyn thought that was the height of sophistication!'” Madelyn Dunham’s brother, Charles Payne, told David Maraniss for his 2012 biography, “Barack Obama: The Story.” That Ann’s father was named Stanley gave Madelyn the conviction to go through with it.
In her younger years, her family and friends called her Stannie Ann, Maraniss wrote in The Washington Post. But after high school, she started introducing herself by her middle name, though she didn’t completely drop Stanley. Her 1992 anthropology dissertation from the University of Hawaii is signed “S. Ann Dunham.” And she added Stanley in parentheses before Ann Dunham in all official correspondence.
