According to Secrets of the Tomb, Alexandra Robbins’ book about Skull & Bones (the Yale secret society to which our President and his father both belonged), some new pledges — called “knights” — are automatically assigned traditional secret names:
“Magog,” the knight who has the most experience with members of the opposite sex; “Gog,” the least sexually experienced member; “Long Devil,” the tallest man in the club; “Boaz,” any varsity football captain; and “Little Devil,” Long Devil’s rival and the shortest knight in the club. The knights who are left over are free to choose their own names…
But here’s the fun part:
The Bonesmen who influenced George W. Bush’s life would have known him by another name: Temporary, an appellation he used because he could not think of anything else and never bothered to change it.
(For what it’s worth, George Senior was reportedly named Magog.)