The tragedy of the middle name

[kate_schaefer]

Yesterday was my 58th birthday. I had a lovely day. Spring in Seattle is long and mild, with temperatures in the high 40s to the low 60s. Right now, daffodils,hyacinths, grape hyacinths, and the last of the big crocuses are blooming on the ground, with cherry trees overhead, and quince, gooseberry, clematis armandii, and daphne odorata filling the space in between. The air smells great, and I'm not allergic to any of the things that make it smell great*. Glenn and I took two neighbhorhood walks yesterday and ate lunch at our neighbhorhood Indian restaurant. Later, I took another walk with Vonda, so over all I felt the smug virtue of the person who has had a reasonable amount of exercise.

In the afternoon, I baked wheat-free lemon bars to take to my evening Clarion West meeting (I am a person who volunteers slightly too much, so I have another Clarion West meeting this evening. Last week, I had two Clarion West database-related events, neither of which was, strictly speaking, a Clarion West meeting. Next week, I have no Clarion West meetings or events scheduled, so I may get a whole lot of Clarion West database and fundraising infrastructure work done). The meeting ran on time, got through all its scheduled work, and was overall useful, a thing which can't always be said about meetings.

The lemon bars had no structural integrity, a frequent problem with wheat-free baking, but they tasted great and filled the dietary niche of birthday cake, though without the tiny candles, to which I am also allergic. Today, after a night in the fridge, their structural integrity is greatly improved.

But I was going to talk about the tragedy of the middle name. Parents! Especially prospective parents, who have not yet named their yet-to-be-born children! Be sure to give your child as a first name the name by which you intend to call that child. Do not, I beg of you, do not give your child two names and then call the child by the second name. If you name your child Xaphod Beeblebrox Jones, call your child Xaphod, not Beeblebrox.

In the carefree days of my youth, it was not a big deal that I was always addressed by a nickname for my middle name. A moment of correcting the teacher on the first day of school, a quick note on the class roster, and everything was fine for the whole school year. I never used that first name for anything. Most of the time, I just used it as an initial, or left it off altogether, as I got jobs, applied for credit, paid bills, filed taxes under the name I use for formal purposes, Kathryn Schaefer. In those days, in the US, your name could be whatever you said it was, as long as you weren't trying to defraud other people or do some other criminal thing. At the time, of course, we didn't know we were living in the olden days.

It's still not a big deal, not at all, except when I want to buy a plane ticket, use that plane ticket, check my social security record, buy or sell stock or real estate, open a bank account, vote, or register for practically anything legal. Everything is computerized, and all the computer records and forms assume that the name that matters is the first name. Even when there is room to enter the whole name, the middle name is subsequently abbreviate to one letter.

This is a common problem in my family. My mother, Yvonne, must travel under her first name pseudonym of Marian. My brother Duncan doesn't answer to Lawrence, but that's what TSA calls him. My father-in-law, Glenn the elder, does not rejoice in his secret first name of Warren. Glenn's niece, Alexis, shows an ID that says Margaret. Of the five of us, only Alexis chose to go by her middle name. The parents of the other four all gave us first names that they never, never intended to use for any purpose whatsoever. They just put the names in that order because they thought they sounded better that way.

If names sound better in a particular order, but that sequence is almost never uttered, do they really sound better?

I've talked about this problem for years. I've hesitated to go ahead and change my legal name to the name I use in normal life for a number of reasons, chief among them being the pain in the butt nature of doing so. I may have reached the point where I'm ready to deal with the pain later this year. Dealing with the mismatch between my names costs me a ridiculous amount of time and aggravation.

But hey! You prospective parents! It's not too late for your kids. Head off this tragedy now by putting the name you'll use first on the birth certificate. Let your kids blame you for some other parenting error.

* Unfortunately, I am allergic to a large number of the things that don't have much effect on the way the air smells in spring but are in that air anyway: birch pollen, alder pollen, maple pollen, pine pollen. They aren't as bad as the pollens that show up in the summer, when every tiny grass feels free to get out and try to reproduce in my nostrils.

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday!

My brother was called Pat (based on his middle name Patrick) until he came home from school and said "Don't call me Pat! That's a girl's name!"

[daveon.livejournal.com]

My father's entire family used their middle names. In the case of the girls it was because they were all called Mary _something_, where the _something_ didn't necessarily even match what they were called. Mary Margaret was Maureen, Mary Ellen was Brenda, and Mary Catherine was at least Kitty.

Dad was Martin Patrick, but as his dad was Martin, he was forever Paddy.

His older brother was actually called by his given name, but as nobody really could pronounce Taigh, they'd call him Tim (which technically is the same).

Would drive me mad.

[samhenderson.livejournal.com]

I have no middle name, who in my youth was more difficult than it seems because for some reason I always had to put down NMI (for no middle initial), which means I often ended up as Samantha N. Henderson, which isn't my legal name, or at the least had people ask how to pronounce it and what language was it. It doesn't seem to be a requirement anywhere now, thank ghu.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I also had no middle name until I gave myself one by adding a first name I preferred. (Social Security doesn't agree even if every other institution does. Not worth the money to legally change it, I think.) I never had trouble with forms, though.

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

I've always disliked my middle name and almost never use it - except on my passport. And then the airlines tend to run the two names together as if they were one. Go figure.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday! I'm so glad it was a good one!

Love, C.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I wish I had known this change was coming back in 1979. I named my son John Luis Frank because the rhythm sounded better that way, but I never intended to cal him anything but Frank. And then when his records mostly said just Frank, and his social security said John Luis Frank, I thought "well, just as well, if he ever has to evade the draft . . ."

In 2011, apparently, Homeland Security decided the same thing. Suddenly he couldn't get financial aid or even matriculate in school without all of his records matching. He very nearly needed to take a whole year off school and go to court to have his name changed legally (to his same name), but at the last minute we turned up his passport, which had Frank on one page and John Luis Frank on another page, so all (!) he had to do was to go to Social Security and anywhere else that had John Luis Frank and get everything changed to Frank.

So I gae my son three names, but now he has only one. But he got to go to school that year, and he doesn't feel any loss for the names, since he never identified strongly with them.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday!

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Yeah, that Pat/Patrick thing motivates a lot of Patricks to insist on the full name. I don't think I've ever run into a Patricia who went for the full name, though I'm sure that they're out there.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

About five generations back in my dad's dad's family, there was a generation of all Johanns. Johann Theodor, Johann Theobald, Johann Michael, Johann Karl.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I've ended up with Nmi sometimes, when I've just offered up my middle name as my first name and then been asked for that missing middle initial. I prefer not to pronounce it, since Kathryn Enemy Schaefer seems like kind of a hostile name.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I only have trouble with forms when I try to comply with them literally and run into conflicts with previous versions of the name.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Airlines tend to act as though they have no capacity for decent data processing when it comes to passengers, which is so bizarre, given that passengers are their business.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's an odd calendar year so far, but on balance, good.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, even as recently as the seventies or eighties, we could be relatively casual about our names.

I have an aunt who was named Carol Gene at birth, at least as far as her parents were concerned. She was in her sixties when she finally looked at what was on her birth certificate and learned that the state of Ohio thought her name was just Jean. She changed it legally.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I think John Hedtke's first wife went by her full name of Patricia.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course. How could I forget? Thanks.

[lcohen]

happy day after your birthday!

my parents gave me a first name with an unusual spelling to facilitate calling me by the nickname that would go with that spelling but at least they are both my first name.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Are you a secret Elisabeth?

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

"Patty" has been out of style since the '70s ended, I think. Unless perhaps you're Irish and living in Ireland, where it seems that the diminutive may last forever.

Happy birthday! So far I've collected GF recipes for lemon bars, but I haven't actually made any yet. Still, yum.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

In my acquaintance, I think all the Pattys, Pattis, female Pats, and that one Patricia I forgot about are within ten years of my age.

(Kate goes off and looks at some data.)

Well, that makes sense. Patricia was very, very popular in the forties, peaking at number 5 for girls' names according to the entertaining and obsessive given name project website, then sinking way down to just below Whitney and above Sophia in the nineties. I assume Whitney has moved way higher since then, and I know that Sophia has, but I am not going to give in to the urge to go off and research some data point that just caught my attention because shiny... Patrick, on the other hand, never shot to to the top, but never dropped down, either.

[ellen klages (from livejournal.com)]

My grandmother, Rose Lenore Janeway, was never anything but Lenore.

Her daughter, my mother, Helen Virginia Booze, was only Virginia, and then later, in college, Boo.

About three years ago, my (now 13-year-old) niece decided to drop her first name, which is what everyone in the world called her, in favor of her middle name.

I'd think it was genetic pre-destination, except that my two sisters and I have always used our given first names.

(BTW, my middle name is Janeway. It used to be obscure, but...)

[librarygrrl]

Happy Belated Birthday! :)

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Names and the way people use them can be so weird. DIdn't you consider Janeway Klages as a byline? Or was it Ellen Janeway?

And yours is the first comment I've seen in my LiveJournal where someone used their Facebook ID. Is Facebook the irrefragably irresistible force? Must I, too, be assimilated?