Where does the middle name go in a name that has been translated into Chinese? Many westerners (like I) possess a three-part name in full.


  given + middle + family [名·中间名·姓]


It's understood that―in China―middle names typically don't exist.

Usually, westerners only translate their legal "first" and “last” names as per the traditional Chinese format below. (phonetically or otherwise)


  family + given [姓·名]


However, if one would like to retain their middle name in the translation, where would they place it? What would be the conventional or culturally appropriate arrangement in this case?

Note: Most transliterations do tend to be exceedingly long compared to native Chinese names, but for now let's not worry about the total character count too much.
Very easy, just use Wikipedia to find examples, such as:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is listed as 沃尔夫冈·阿马德乌斯·莫扎特 on Chinese Wikipedia
Johann Sebastian Bach is 约翰·塞巴斯蒂安·巴赫 in Chinese.
Thomas Alva Edison is transliterated as 托马斯·阿尔瓦·爱迪生 by full name in Chinese.

We could continute, but you see the pattern: [first]·[middle]·[last]

Two more observations:

(1) Sometimes the name to which the middle initial(s) of a person resolve(s) to is/are not known, in other cases, they are just a middle initial, e.g. Harry S. Truman (or Harry S Truman), which in Chinese is written as 哈里·S·杜鲁门, with the Latin letter between the Chinese characters. A bit odd, but remember that Chinese will use just the last name to refer to a foreign person, e.g. 杜鲁门, so the awkward &quot;mixed&quot; form will probably be used only once in a text (when the person's full name is introduced.)

(2) In other cases, when a person's middle name is not known, Chinese might use a character to replace the middle initial, this is commonly seen with Russian (Ukrainian, etc.) personages. Technically, the Russian middle name is a patronymic name, i.e. not the same as the Anglo-Saxon/Western middle name and middle initial, but from the Chinese point of view the issue is similar. Even if a Russian person's full name (given name + patronymic name + family name) is known, it's still rather long, especially when you need to fit that onto a television screen, e.g. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is 米哈伊尔·谢尔盖耶维奇·戈尔巴乔夫, which is quite intimidating, especially in Chinese characters. Because most Chinese won't know how to type the (Cyrillic) first letter С [not the same as Latin capital letter C] of Sergeyevich (Сергеевич), they will adopt a different, easier solution: 米哈伊尔·谢·戈尔巴乔夫, i.e. shorten the patronymic name to the first character of the Chinese transliteration.