But he wasn't content to be known as Hubert Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff. He wanted to be Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, Sr., and therein lies the story.
Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, who died in 1997, was a World War II veteran who later became a typesetter on Philadelphia's German language daily newspaper, Die Deutsche Wacht, according to the Social Security Death Index.
In the early 1950s, he came upon an old German poem that extolled the virtues of one Otto Ludwig Huber Blumsthal Graf Ferdinand Leopold August Freiherr von Steiger zu Adelsheim.
Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff was so impressed with the name that he decided to adopt it as his own.
After a number of unsuccessful attempts to change his name, Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, Sr. successfully got a Pennsylvania judge to change his name to Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, Sr. His lawyer, a William T. McLaughlin of Philadelphia, called it "the world's longest name."
Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, Sr., told the Associated Press on Dec. 14, 1958 that "I had always liked large, imposing names. So I put them all together and had an announcement printed."