A former student has suggested I ask one of the questions about US Presidents that I ask each year in seminars.   Conscious that this is a blog about the Lords – but equally conscious that readership increases when I ask questions about US Presidents! – I thought I would offer a link between a feature of some peers and a US President.

Some members of the House of Lords choose titles which are purely territorial.  Thus, to take two or three examples, former Labour Cabinet minister Ted Short became Lord Glenamara.  Essex county councillor Paul White is Lord Hanningfield.  Former Labour MP Dennis Turner is Lord Bilston.  Such peers thus spend part of their active political life with names that they were not given at birth.

What is possibly less well known is that some Presidents of the USA have entered office with names different to those that they were given at birth.  Bill Clinton, for example, started life as William Jefferson Blythe.  However, in his case only the surname changed.  There has been one 20th Century President who entered the White House with a name that bore no relation to the one he was given at birth.  Anyone know which President it was?

And keeping the link with the peerage, who was the President with a rank of peerage in his name?