Issues with your name

Challenge with my name? Yes. I don't like it.

When as a teen I raised this with my mother, she said, "Count your blessings, kid. Your father wanted to name you Aubrey." These things can always be worse, OP.

Have you considered a blog?

I can relate because I use a nickname not usually associated with a given name. It was indeed a nightmare at school, especially because I was shy and could never summon the courage to ask my teachers to call me by my preferred nickname. It's continued now into adulthood and at doctors, dentists, etc. I'm never sure whether I'm known as XXX or YYY. I'll never have kids but if I did I would never ever give them a nickname.

My father had the same issue. His first name was the same as his father's so his family called him by his middle name. All his life his family Including my mother) called him by his middle name, while at work, military he was called by his first name. No end of confusion when we were kids. Later in life he went by his first name, middle name initials. Simplified everything.

I’m another middle namer. I’ve actually had issues before with reference checks when job interviewing — my resume uses my middle and last names only, but HR depts have me as my full name. So it leads to some confusion.

I’ve looked into changing it legally but I have to submit fingerprints and I don’t like that.

I tried to convince my siblings to give their kid two middle names. They ignored me.

A fancy first name, like “Corncob” or “Bridgeport”

A middle name, a family name, like Saltonstall or Peabody (usually mother’s maiden)

A second middle name, so the child can have some peace, like Michael or Mary

And a last name as usual.

Issues with my name?

No, why do you ask?

In my family all of the first born males got tagged with my first name. Kind of a pain. I lost out on being a 3rd because my mom insisted my middle name not be Albert.

My sister the teacher related that “Colin”...

For Black kids, was pronounced like Colin Powell

For While (Usually Irish) kids, was pronounced like an abbreviation for Colander + Lynn.

My middle name is just one letter, J.

When i got my SS card in 9th or 10th grade, my mom had to write SS after they rejected my application for not providing the full spelling. "That's it. That IS his middle name."

I have always loved it.

I have always been called by by middle name, and increasingly find it annoying even though I do prefer it to my first name. Banks, bureaucracies, and employers can all be sticklers and red tape gets redder with anything out of the ordinary. Some of my older ID and accounts just have my first name, so a few years ago I started signing government ID with all three names.

I advised friends not to do the same with their kid, but they ignored me. Why make his life more complicated?

My partner goes by his middle name because he hates his first name (it’s not as bad as Aubrey) but it gets complicated because his middle name is the same as his younger brother’s first name , so I have to do a lot of interchanging between the two.

R10, President Harry S Truman invented his middle initial. It stood for nothing. As here, you will often see it without a period after the “S”.

I worked with a lady who tried to hide her first name from the army of all groups. She filled out all the paperwork with her middle name. She was surprised when she was disciplined for not using her correct name.

I have trouble pronouncing the diminutive version of my first name, so I have to go by the more formal version. My middle name always get pronounced wrong by others, it’s a family name. That’s why I wished I had a second middle name that was something simple I could have used.

My sister invented a second middle name but because there was nothing legal about it, it was a nightmare for her.

I am a third. Stupidly, there were never nicknames, and my grandfather lived next door to us. So many times when my grandfather was still alive, some one would ask for X senior, and we'd direct them to another phone number. Or someone would ask for X junior, looking for me, and then they'd end up with my father. Very much a pain in the ass.

Oh, and another memory. When my grandfather died, a friend's boss asked her if she had heard that my grandfather had died. She hadn't, and all she knew was the name and assumed it was me. Walking into high school that day was a tad surreal, since the rumor had spread that I had died.

Gee, r6, I'm sure your siblings' kids are very sorry your sibs didn't heed your advice and saddle them with names like "Corncob Saltonstall Mary Smith."

There’s a family from my home town where the men were named Knott Martin. “Knott” was a mother’s maiden name in the 1700s. Anyway, there were a lot of them, maybe 13 or so, and the old documentation is a mess because a man might be born Knott Martin IV, then later be called Jr. Then Sr. Then 3rd.

There’s a tomb for Knott Martin 3d that I found in a churchyard, but I can’t tell who’s buried in it.

R18, You mean, “Corncob Saltonstall Mary Smith 2d”

Singer Anne Murray's mother had all boys and desperately wanted a baby girl so she made devotions to St. Anne on a regular basis and promised that if she had a girl she would call her Anne, after the saint. Eureka! She got her baby girl and called her Morna Anne Murray. However Anne dropped the "Morna" and went by her middle name of Anne because it sounded better. And became a big star.

My Great Aunt, who I met, had a middle name of “Ridgeway”. That name was carried forward for generations. The last male family member with Ridgeway as a last name was Ebenezer, born 1738. He was a ship builder during the Revolution.

I wish my folks had carried on the tradition. I might have to get a dog just so I can name him. Ridgeway van Siclen, of the New Amsterdam van Siclens.

My dad gave all the kids names so that our initials were JKL. My first name and my brother's first name only differ by one initial and he's only a year younger than me. It caused so many problems in school with grades and then with credit bureaus. For those and so many reasons I changed my name 22 years ago, I kept my first name and use it as my middle name and I have a new first name and last name, and I made sure it's so unlike my old name that there wouldn't be any credit problems. It also helped that I've had a credit freeze for as long as I can remember. I think him giving us similar names robbed us of our individuality.

All the time we were growing up my parents called us by our middle names at home and our first names at church or other gatherings, so when I started school I kept doing it because I was in school with church friends and then later made other friends who only knew me by that name. I thought everyone did it but of course I was wrong.

I grew up with a kid named “Lee Scott”. It was how everyone referred to him. No one thought that Scott might be a middle name. He became an artist and goes by a Hindu first name, now.

I went to school with a family whose last name was Kopenis--second syllable pronounced "pen," but you can guess how kids would say it...

I'm a III called by my middle name through high school; when I went off to college I started going by my first name (my dad went by a diminutive most of the time). So, am called either, depending on whether it's an older acquaintance/family member or not.

There was a brother and sister named Kneebone in my high school. They both looked like Lurch, the sister more so.

I grew up with a very common last name. When I say, "common" I mean of the "John Smith" variety. It didn't bother me much at first until I went to school with a kid with the same name. Later on there were a few different crimes committed by, two (seriously) different people with the same name in my home state and I got phone calls from friends and family asking if the person was me.

One day (about 15 years ago) my manager (yes, I'm an actor) decided that I should choose a new last name. So we found one no one else we could find had. I started doing business under it (and it's listed alongside every business/social document I've ever had to fill out) and now it's the name people know me by: that includes my friends, the people I work with and it's even on my checks. A couple of months ago I had to fill out something and it took me a minute or two to remember my real name.

I'll never give up my actual name if only because out of 5 kids (and I'm the only boy) my sisters got married and all changed their last names. I'm the last one of this particular part of the line.

[QUOTE] When I say, "common" I mean of the "John Smith" variety.

I have a cousin by the name of Jon Doe; no Jane though.

I’m a man with a last name that is a very common first name for men. Sort of like James Stewart or George Michael, except that unlike these examples, my first name is one that no one should ever mistake for a last name. So think of a name like Andy Lee. No one should ever read that name and assume that Lee is the first name, right, because who ever heard of Andy as a last name? I get called my equivalent of “Lee” several times a month, often by people I’ve worked with for years. It happens most frequently in emails, which is curious because the convention for Outlook email usernames is last name first, so they should be able to see which is my first name.

Like all of my family members with whom I share this last name, I learned long ago that when asked my last name, I can’t just say the last name. I have to say, “Last name is [NAME].]” Failure to do that invites the irritated response, “No, I said your LAST name!”

I also don’t have a middle name. That was a problem as a kid because no one believed me and assumed I was hiding a terrible name. It was also a problem on a job where three initials were presumed for all employees for network login purposes, so I was assigned the middle initial X.

On the other hand, my full legal name is only nine letters long, which I kind of like for it’s simplicity.

I go by my second middle name, which is one of my mother’s family names. It’s usually a boys name, but that can be really cute on a girl and besides, I like that makes me stand out from the crowd.

It wasn't until the 5th grade when I figured out, thanks to my teacher, that my initials spelled a name. I'd never thought about it before and no one had mentioned it. This one day my teacher asked the class if our initials spelled a word. It was then I realized that my initials spelled the name P.A.M. On top of this she asked each student in the class to say their initials. It wasn't bad enough that I was slightly effeminate but now I had classmates who started called me Pamela. I asked my mom about this when I got home and she said that it didn't occur to her that my initials spelled Pam until a few weeks after I was born and she thought it was too late to change the paperwork. Gee, thanks Mom.

A lot of Deplorables think I am Hispanic, because they don't know how to pronounce my name.

My family name is the same as the family name of the most famous rock and roll singer of the 1950s. Endless comments about it growing up, strangers calling me by his famous first name, etc. Now that last name has become a trendy first name.....I'll never escape it.....argghh

Jesus, is that really you? (r34)

I love my name and have thanked my mother many times for bestowing it upon me.

I was given a nickname instead of the full name. It's something trashy and redneck like Billy Bob. Five years later my brother was given the full name William Robert. I got teased all through childhood for having a redneck name.

[quote] R31: the convention for Outlook email usernames is last name first,

I’m pretty sure you can change this if you want. I think I did, to first name, first, though I’m not looking now to check.

I have always been called by my middle name. I am annoyed when people find this out and ask "So, what's your REAL name?"

As if I'm using an alias.

My mother’s name has been spelled incorrectly her entire life. It is not an unusual name; there are just lots of different ways to spell it. She has disliked consistently having her name misspelled, so that when she had her children, she gave us name that no one would ever spell incorrectly. She also selected names that were unusual without being weird. I have always been grateful to my mother for this....it has made the convention of being called by name very easy for me. Ironically, my mother later got married to a man whose last name was impossible to pronounce. So she spent much of her life with a first name that no one could spell and a last name that no one could pronounce. That is a fate which did not befall me (or my siblings either).