I was saddened to see the obituary for Linus Pauling Jr., M.D., a fellow psychiatrist, but note he lived a very full life to 98 years.

I met Dr. Pauling only once in the 1980s and asked him what it was like to be named a “junior” of his father who had won, not one, but two Nobel Prizes. He said it was awful. At the time I thought how much it must have been like to have been Frank Sinatra Jr.

I have two daughters so I wasn’t faced with this, but it doesn’t seem right to me to name your son junior, the II, the III or the IV. Everybody deserves their own name.

Mark Stitham, M.D.

Kailua

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