It may seem like a weird personal name to us now, but I suppose at one time many people would've had that middle name in homage to Beethoven (if not due to direct family nominative tradition).
And Dr. H is only 'Gay' I'd heard of, aside previously from the eponymous Gay Byrne (famed Irish broadcaster and media personality).
I'n surprised to be told by Wiki that his registered firstname at birth was actually Gabriel, and that for him the given name 'Gay' was simply a further truncated shortening of the familial 'Gabe'.
I wonder if 'Gay' as a 1900s recorded first-name had its origins in this specific trajectory of abbreviation, or if it was merely a quasi-adjectival baptismal name resonant with eg Faith / Joy / Hope etc (albeit known only to me as female firstnames: or am I 20thC blindsighted on this, as I was with
Shirley and
Marion ?)
ps the last name 'Hitler' is vaguely-familiar to me, but I can't remember where I've heard it before
pps Dr Hitler's mother's middle-name 'Lutz'...another nod to a (less) famous composer? (
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_Lutz)