By Rebecca Davis O’BrienJuly 15, 2024In May 2022, when J.D....

By Rebecca Davis O’Brien

• July 15, 2024

In May 2022, when J.D. Vance was a primary candidate vying for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump referred to him — or, seemed to refer to him — in passing at a rally in Nebraska.

“We’ve endorsed J.P. — right? J.D. Mandel, and he’s doing great,” Mr. Trump told the crowd. “And let’s see what happens.”

Mr. Trump had apparently confused Mr. Vance, whom he had just given a major boost with an endorsement the previous month, with his opponent in the Ohio Republican primary, Josh Mandel.

In Mr. Trump’s defense, James David Vance has had a number of names in his life, a function of an upbringing marked by domestic instability and a revolving door of father figures, as chronicled in his best-selling 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

At birth, Mr. Vance was named James Donald Bowman, after his father, Donald Bowman. Mr. Bowman was Mr. Vance’s mother’s second husband — Mr. Vance wrote that they split up when he was a toddler, and that Mr. Bowman gave him up for adoption when he was 6.

After the divorce, Mr. Vance’s mother married Bob Hamel, who became J.D.’s legal father, and she changed her son’s name. James Donald Bowman became James David Hamel, swapping out her ex-husband’s first name for her uncle’s name, David, to preserve the “J.D.” — which by then was Mr. Vance’s established nickname. (“This seemed a bit of a stretch even when I was six,” Mr. Vance wrote. “Any old D name would have done, so long as it wasn’t Donald.”)

A few years later, Mr. Hamel and J.D.’s mother split up. “One of the worst parts, honestly, was that Bob’s departure would further complicate the tangled web of last names in our family.” His mother, he wrote, took the last name of “whatever husband she was married to.” Her own parents (“Mamaw” and “Papaw”) were Vances.

When J.D. got to Yale Law School, he began to tell his friends about his childhood and his identity. His legal father, whose name was on his birth certificate, was a “total stranger.”

After he graduated from law school, J.D. married a former classmate, UshaChilukuri, and they both changed their last name to Vance — “giving me, finally, the same name as the family to which I belonged.”

RebeccaDavis O’Brien covers campaign finance and money in U.S. elections. She previously covered federal law enforcement, courts and criminal justice. More about Rebecca DavisO’Brien

(NY Times)