I’d always thought Judge Learned Hand’s name was mighty cool — and apt, given his high reputation — but I’ve wondered what parents would have the chutzpah to give a boy a name like that.
It turns out that they didn’t; he was born Billings Learned Hand — which of course would also have been a really apt name, though more for a practicing lawyer . . . . Learned was apparently a name that ran in the family; his mother was named Lydia Coit Learned Hand.
Learned’s cousin Augustus Hand, who was also a Second Circuit judge, was actually Augustus Noble Hand, but he decided to stick with the first name.
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