I've programmed on punched cards. System/360, FORTRAN77. Carter administration.
Whether history exists or not, is not the question. Whether byte misers from long ago caused this name-mangling issue, that's the conjecture part. At least one aspect of the guy's complaint was of recent origin, and ironically that was from arbitrarily insisting the name be longer than it is.
The SE answer links to the relevant documentation. Spaces are indeed optional. It's not explicitly documented that a non-whitespaced 'MR' is read as a title, but it seems likely.
Whether history exists or not, is not the question. Whether byte misers from long ago caused this name-mangling issue, that's the conjecture part. At least one aspect of the guy's complaint was of recent origin, and ironically that was from arbitrarily insisting the name be longer than it is.