Actually I feel like I heard about
Rose more widely used as a middle name on here than elsewhere.
Where I grew up, it seemed
Ann (almost always
Ann, not
Anne) was the placeholder nickname born by every third girl.
Marie was another popular one, and
Lynn was the third in the overused middle name trifecta. It always seemed to me that those names were given with limited thought as a suitable name to include in a middle name slot on a birth certificate. (That was almost certainly an unnecessary and unjustifiable judgment on my part.)
But as a result, I'm not a fan of any of those names as middle names, but I think all but
Lynn are lovely as first names. (Well, not
Ann - I so prefer
Anne.)
As I recall, middle names were not really used in my area until the late 1700s, and even then only by a limited portion of the upper crust of society, though they were in wide circulation by the middle of the 19th century. I'm guessing that data wouldn't be hard to track down, though I have no idea what common ones may have been in place. (Maybe familial/godparent relations? Political-adjacent names?)
Andrew
put a smile on your face - make the world a better place (: