How Captain James T. Kirk got his middle name

How Captain James T. Kirk’s middle name came to be isn’t set in stone

If you’ve watched Star Trek: The Animated Series, you know that the 17th episode of the series entitled “Bem” provided Captain James T. Kirk’s middle name as Tiberius. But from where did such an unusual middle name originate? Turns out, Captain Kirk owes his middle name to Roman history…maybe.

David Gerrold, who wrote “Bem” as well as “More Tribbles, More Troubles” for The Animated Series as well as “The Trouble with Tribbles” for The Original Series, was attending a Star Trek convention with D. C. Fontana when someone from the audience asked them what Kirk’s middle name was. Gerrold had just finished reading a book on Roman history and still had Tiberius in his head. So that was his immediate response. And the audience was very enthusiastic about the name.

But did Captain James. T. Kirk really get his middle name from David Gerrold?

Gerrold shared the middle name with Gene Roddenberry who approved it, and Tiberius was used for the first time in The Animated Series. The name became a part of live- canon when it was used in the final movie that featured the original cast, Star Trek: VI The Undiscovered Country. It was during the trial of Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy for the death of the Klingon Chancellor Gorkon.

Though Gerrold shared this behind-the-scenes tidbit about the middle name in The Fifty-Year Mission (The First 25 Years), there is some who don’t agree as the full name of the main character in Gene Roddenberry’s 1964 series The Lieutenant was William Tiberius Rice. And many believe that’s where the name came from. Either way, we would have had the same middle name, and had “Bem” been used as a third season episode of The Original Series, as it had been pitched, we would have known Captain Kirk’s middle name sooner. Regardless of how the middle name came to be, the unusual moniker perfectly suits Captain James T. Kirk.