Former governor of New York Mario Cuomo used to tell the story of how, early in his political career, he was advised to change his name to something that didn't end in a vowel. Although he never actually ran, Cuomo was frequently mentioned over several election cycles as a possible presidential candidate, giving rise to the question of whether America was ready to elect a president whose name ends in a vowel. The prospect of President-Elect Obama makes me wonder: How many presidents have we had whose name ends in a vowel?

If you count alphabetically, there have been six: four ending in "e" and two ending in "y". If you count phonetically, it's only three. The two -y president qualify (McKinley, Kennedy), but of the -e presidents, only Monroe's name ends in a vowel sound. The others don't (Fillmore, Pierce, Coolidge).

Tallying the sounds and letters that end presidential names, I notice two things. One, voiced consonants outnumber unvoiced consonants by near four to one. Two, in both letters and sounds, N is way out in the lead.

Letters: N=16, R=6, E=4, T=4, D=3, S=3, H=2, Y=2, G=1, K=1

Sounds: voiced consonants, n=16, r=7, d=3, z=3, j=1, ng=1; unvoiced consonants, t=4, sh=2, k=1, s=1, ; vowels, ee=2, oh=1.

The -n candidates have made a good run at it again this year. Although the front-runner is not among them, his main opponent in both the general and the primary had names ending in n, as do both parties' running-mates.

Among those running in the Democratic primary this year, Obama was the only one whose name ends in a vowel. The Republicans, on the other hand, offered four: Romney, Huckabee, Giuliani, and Tancredo.

In another version of Mario Cuomo's story, the objection to his name is not that it ends in a vowel but that it contains too many vowels. In both "Cuomo" and "Obama", vowels outnumber consonants. No past president has had a name in which that is the case, though there are six where consonants and vowels are equal: Monroe, Pierce, Coolidge, Hoover, Eisenhower, and Reagan.

Eisenhower could have been the first if he'd kept the original spelling, "Eisenhauer". (I'm not good with German, but I think that means "iron cutter".) But then, that illustrates the point, doesn't it? Too many vowels makes a name sound un-American. Someone in Dwight D's family tree felt obliged to respell the name precisely because it looked too German.

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