Middle Name Pride

Other middle name stories and how this got started.

2008-03-06T09:01:00.000-08:00

As I've dealt with what sometimes feels like a minor hobby [managing my names] out of the corner of my eye, I've met hundreds of people in the same bind everywhere I've gone.

One of my best friends in high school, Scott, has another given name in front of that one. He never used his first given name and despite the fact that he lived in our home when his father kicked him out for a few months, I never knew he had this other name until I saw it on top of some bureaucratic administrative form from the school system.

Scott was embarrassed. Not by his any of his names, but by the complexity of the now-mandatory explanation. Man he was a happy guy when I told him my similar story.

The standard formula always ends up putting Scott's first given name [but not his second] on his email accounts and W2 forms and medical prescriptions so he is always scurrying around --like I am-- asking people to change their incorrect assumptions so it doesn't confuse everyone even more.

Same with my Army buddy from El Paso, Steve. His parents stuck "Michael" in front of "Steve" on his birth certificate in honor of some ancestor he never knew. Now, there is nothing wrong with "Michael as a name. But Steve didn't use that one. So Steve is always sitting, waiting in the doctor's office reading a magazine while the nurse wanders around asking for someone named "Mike" while they really need to be looking for Steve.

[By the way. Please take polite note. It is bad enough that some people make assumptions about your name and ignore your own preferences. But those folks who feel the need to be over-familiar and cute and turn the wrong name into a nickname make the whole silly situation even worse. Please don't be one of those people.]

Another guy, Brian, [aka James Brian] I worked with in Arizona claimed he lost a girlfriend one time because someone called his apartment looking for him using the first name he did not use, and this girlfriend somehow got the very-paranoid idea he was living under an assumed identity and hiding from the cops or something. Even after he explained the situation, she felt he had somehow betrayed her or been dishonest in some way. Likely Brian was better off without that girlfriend, but it would have been nice for them to have reached the conclusion to part in another fashion.

Anyway, it is amazing the number of folks wandering around who have a given name --or two-- before the one you know about and who don't use that first [or third or fourth] given name except when some staffer makes them put in on an insurance form or similar document.

Did you see our list of famous people who you know by their middle name? http://middlenamepride.blogspot.com/2008/02/list-of-dangerous-people-who-refused-to.html

That's just a sample. There are lots more.

I meet people with stories like that all the time. I think it is because of my "I-don't-put-up-with-much" perspective on life.

I will routinely stop some stranger in the DMV or dentist's office or wherever who decides they know me well enough to use my given name before they ever see me but --because they really do not know me-- then choose to call me by the wrong given name. [Or, worse, will make up some nickname based on the wrong name....]

I feel it is my right to politely ask them to use my other given name and make a note on their forms or in their file or database or whatever. That way we don't have the same problem in the future, it makes it easier for all of us, no confusion, no misunderstanding, etc.

I guess I don't understand why I would not do that. People don't hesitate to correct wrong-birth-date or wrong-weight or wrong-address information. Why would I not correct someone who had my name wrong?

Occasionally some stranger is rude and starts lecturing me about my own name. In that case I draw a firm line since it is after all my name, and they are mistaken, and they chose to meet my polite response with public rudeness.

Anyway, people often come up to me after one of these clarifications [especially if the stranger has been rude to me and the necessary clarification became a bit louder] and these people will say; "Hey! I have always wanted to do that! My name is "Joe" [or whatever] but my first two names are "Raul Wyndotte" [or whatever] but I have always just put up with these rude people calling me the wrong name because I thought I *had* to. No more! I'm going to do what you did from now on."

So. I have sort of became an unwilling fighter for this weird little cause: "Middle name pride."

Is this the most important issue in the world? No. Is it worth disrupting the smooth operating flow of our economy or Democracy? Um. No.

But if you have ever been called by some foolish nickname you did not like by some presumptuous stranger [example: Approaching "Rich" or "Dick" and saying; "Hey Ricky! Nice to meet you!" ] you may have some idea why my buddies Scott and Steve and Brian and I and all those people who have talked to me in lines or in reception areas over the years are a bit tired of being called the wrong name.

Middle name stories --mine

2008-03-06T07:30:00.000-08:00

I never used my first given name. It is the same as my father's but I'm not a junior so it was a bit confusing I guess [Dad was an old school Southern man and didn't have a middle name].

For clarity in household communications my folks just skipped over my first given name [identical to Dad's] and went right to my middle one. Made sense. I never really knew I had another name in front of the one I used until I was well into public school.

No one who knows me knows me by my first given name so it causes no end of confusion when the new receptionist at the dentist's office or the phone bank college kid from the credit agency calls or asks for someone with that name. I've even had people cut off business they were conducting with me because they tried to call and were told they had the wrong number because "no one with that name lives here."

My poor Dad used to end up getting much of my junk mail, doctor's appointment reminder calls and credit card solicitations because my current girlfriend or roommate or other friends or neighbors would direct these wrong-name-folks off toward my Dad. [Just before Dad died the credit bureaus conflated our credit reports in this bizarre, combined, monster bad report. My name, his social security number, my address, his phone number. A nightmare that took months to resolve that could have been avoided, of course, if they had just used our full names]

Now Dad is gone and --now that I think of it-- I suppose I could start using my first given name if I wanted to. Dad doesn't need it now. But for decades I've been called and identify with my middle name. I "am" that name in the odd fashion people of of "being" some label or characteristic.

While I am fond of both my given names [lots of family history in them both] I really just want to continue to "be" who I have always been, the person who uses my second given name. I'm old enough to be watching my 401k very closely now and feeling a bit too set in my ways to want to "be" someone else.

All my life I have been asking people who want to use "my first name" or [more insulting] my "real name" to just use my "full name" [all of it] and that is likely what I'll continue to do. Stops confusion. Stops arguments. My *whole* name. Hard to argue with that. Yet people sometimes do.

Employee: "I detest my first name"

2008-02-16T16:47:00.000-08:00

Interesting advice column story about an employee who hates his first name and wants to know if his employer can make his use it.

As with most such question involving employers the answer appears to be "yes."

I have no idea if these facts are accurate, but here is a pretty good example of the "first name, middle initial" problem.

Andy Rooney: people with famous middle names

2008-02-16T16:25:00.000-08:00

Andy Rooney tackles the subject of middle names and offers a somewhat different kind of list: famous people known by their first, middle and last names. Rooney also reveals his own middle name: "Aitken."

Rooney's column makes me smile to imagine "Zsa Z. Gabor" on a tax form or driver's license.

See the article here

Dangerous people who refuse to use their "first names, middle initials"

2008-02-16T11:25:00.000-08:00

I’ve listed these names of famous people here in the annoying one-size-fits-all-form used by lazy bureaucrats everywhere.

I've provided click-through links to the Wikipedia entries for them so you can see their names as you know them.

Maria C. Aquino
Yitzak E. Asner
Orvan G. Autrey
Francis L. Bailey
Lymann F. Baum
Henry W. Beatty
Earnst I. Bergman
Charles E. Boone
Troyal G. Brooks
Eleanor R. Carter
Arthur N. Chamberlain
Stephan G. Cleveland
Edward M. Clift
Thomas S. Connery
John Coolidge
Ruth E. Davis
Dorothy F. Dunaway
Ralph D. Earnhardt
Ralph D. Earnhardt
John W. Ferrell
Francis S. Fitzgerald
Richard Fuller
Malcolm S. Forbes
William C. Gable
Henry L. Gehrig
Jean P. Getty
Irwin A. Ginsberg
Paul J. Goebbels
Daniel R. Graham
George K. Griffey
Delorez F. Griffith-Joyner
Ernest G. Gygax
Walter R. Hess
John Hoover
Philip Hopkins
Everette H. Hunt
Jon D. Imus
Arthur S. Jefferson
Lewis B. Jones
Joseph R. Kipling
Charles E. Koop
Christopher A. Kutcher
George G. Liddy
Chester T. Lott
James P. McCartney
Terrence S. McQueen
John P. Morgan
Keith R. Murdoch
Clarence R. Nagin
Robert M. Nesmith
George R. Newhart
James D. Nivin
Jame R. O’Neal
Julius R. Oppenheimer [some uncertainly exists regarding this name]
Olive M. Osmond
Morgan S. Peck
Eldred G. Peck
Henry R. Perot
William B. Pitt
Helen B. Potter
James D. Quayle
Charles R. Redford
Michael T. Reznor
Margaret L. Rimes
Willard M. Romney
Anna E. Roosevelt
George T. Seaver
Christa B. Sheilds
Marvin N. Simon
James S. Thurmond
Georgi S. Trebek
Robert T. Turner
Eugene L. Vidal
Aaron M. Ward
Marie D. Warwick
George R. Waters
George O. Welles
Walter B. Willis
Thomas W. Wilson
Laura R. Witherspoon
Adeline V. Woolf
Vina F. Wray

NOTE: Many of these people have more than one "middle initial." In conformity with the "first name, middle initial" model I've only listed the first name, first of any "middle initials," and left off titles as well as indications like "Jr."