Your column about the origin of the name Milk Duds brings to mind another unusual name. In my work in retailing I frequently see checks and credit cards issued by an institution known as Fifth Third Bank. What kind of name is Fifth Third Bank? Sure, not everyone can be first, and Avis did all right with its we’re-number-two-we-try-harder shtick. But third? And not just third, but fifth third? (The Car Talk guys refer to the “third half” of their show, but they’re not asking me to entrust them with my money.) What sort of enterprise is so bereft of hope and ambition that it celebrates bringing up the rear? –Dick Rosemont, East Lansing, Michigan
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When we contacted Fifth Third Bank, we learned that the Cincinnati-based company (Number two in the midwest! Seventy billion in assets!) was formed in 1906 from the merger of the Fifth National Bank and the Third National Bank. This naturally suggested other questions:
(2) If you combine the Fifth and Third banks, aren’t you entitled to average things out and call it the Fourth?
(1) Numerous cities in the 19th century had Fifth national banks, including New York, Chicago, and Saint Louis. What’s more, upon finding an 1889 Cincinnati phone book, we established that the Queen City did in fact have First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth national banks. But no Sixth National Bank, meaning that the Fifth National Bank, in 1889 anyway, was entitled to call itself the Last National Bank.
