If you know me well, you know I go by my middle name. That's right, Kathleen is not my first name. Going by your middle name sort of feels like an elite club your parents made you join by choosing to call you by your middle name. If you go by your middle name, I would guess you have experienced or can relate to some of the following:
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1. The question, "Oh, [insert your middle name] isn't your real name?"
Oh. My. Goodness. I could pull out my driver's license or birth certificate to show you Kathleen is not a fake name, but I am not going to do that. Instead, I am going to roll my eyes and correct you - Kathleen is not my first name, but it is a real one.
2. First day of school/class.
You always have to listen so closely for when the professor calls your name. And God forbid they mispronounce your last name or you may be counted absent. My mom went by her middle name growing up and a substitute teacher mispronounced her first and last name so she was completely skipped over until the teacher got to the end of the list and she thought she had never been called.
3. How important is this document I'm about to fill out?
Like, when it asks for the first name can I get by with saying the name I go by, or is it official enough that I should put my legal name? This is such a struggle. And it sometimes backfires. I recently had to merge a subscription for something and when they updated my existing record, my new account said my middle and last name, while the old one said my first and last name. I had to explain it's all the same person and what the mix-up was. Cue the heavy sigh.
4. The built-in screening process of mail and phone calls.
If I get a piece of mail or a voicemail left from someone asking to speak to [my first name], I know they do not know me. If it is telemarketer type of call or mail, I can easily screen those things out and move on without having to devote a lot of time or attention to it. So there's a benefit!
5. When people ask "the story" about why you go by your middle name.
Then you have to go through the internal debate where you try to discern in about 3 seconds whether to share the entire story behind your name or just give the classic response, "my parents knew they wanted to call me this name and liked the sound of [first, middle] rather than [middle, first]". Sometimes, it is hard to tell how much to share. Either way, I didn't choose the middle name life, the middle name life chose me my parents chose it for me.
6. Those occasional moments where you ask yourself if it would make life easier to just go by your first name.
The answer, for me, is always no. It would be a change of identity and such a pain. So I'll just continue to live as a member of this middle name club and be proud of it.
