My parents, Ashkenazi refugees/child of refugees, gave their children (born in the 1940’s and 50’s) extremely common majority-culture names. They didn’t want us to stand out, they thought it was dangerous.
But one of my grandmothers had died not long before I was born. So I was given her name (Jews don’t give the name of a living immediate family member) – but as a middle name, and in Anglicized form.
I disliked the first name I’d been given, partly because another child made a rhyming teasing thing out of it, and partly because it was so common and I was tired of turning around when people were talking to somebody else. And while I don’t practice it seems to me that there ought to be something about me that’s Jewish. So in my 20’s I started using my grandmother’s name – but not in the Anglicized version on my birth certificate, but in as close as I can pronounce it the version which my grandmother used. It’s a very common Ashkenazi name, but it’s very uncommon everywhere I’ve lived.
I should have had it legally changed when I was in my 20’s, when it would have been relatively simple – one bank account, no credit cards (it was the 1970’s, many people had no credit cards.) But at the time it didn’t seem to matter, because there weren’t anywhere near so many things demanding that you use the exact same name; and by the time it started to matter, I was afraid that the change wouldn’t get through to everyone at once and it would cause me all sorts of hassles.
– all those poor sales clerks who’ve been told to repeat their customers’ first names over and over to make it seem they’re on a friendly basis? They’re using the name on the credit cards – and making it utterly clear that we’re not on a friends basis, because it’s the wrong name. Anyone who actually knows me knows not to call me that, even if they know the full legal shebang.
Of course, the real solution to being friendly (or at least, something resembling friendly) with a person you’ve just met is to just ask them directly what they’d prefer to be called. I’m not sure why more people don’t do this.
I’m pretty sure the sales clerks are doing what their bosses told them to do.
And I’m pretty sure their bosses are telling them something that the bosses learned in some seminar or other course they paid for to teach them how to deal with customers, instead of dealing with actual customers for a while to learn that way.
People who’ve just met me in a social situation don’t call me by my first name because they’re not told what it is. A lot of them mispronounce the name I actually use, but as long as they’re making a reasonable attempt I don’t mind. I’m probably not pronouncing it quite like my grandmother did, either.
I was, unfortunately, named as a junior. I’ve never cared for it, but I guess it is what it is. Anyway, my dad, previously known by his first name, or so I was told, switched to using his (our) middle name, and I got to use the first name to avoid confusion. So whatever.
A few years ago, I took to using an assumed name at fast-food restaurants when the order-taker asks for my name. It seems they refused to hear my real name correctly and would call out similar-sounding names when the order was ready. Over a period of time, in numerous places. I got so I would try to enunciate as clearly as I could, but to no effect. Maybe that made it worse; I don’t know. I would try spelling it out for them, but no luck. They would get it right sometimes, but far too often, they’d mess it up. And it’s not a difficult or unusual name. I don’t know what the problem was. No one I talk to on a regular basis has ever mentioned anything about my speech being unclear or impaired in any way. Anyway, I finally gave up. Now I tell them I’m Mike. I figure that one is clear and distinct and damn near impossible for even the most inattentive and careless order taker to get wrong. And no one ever has. And my younger daughter, if I’m with her, always grins real big with amusement when I poot forth a “Mike.” So that’s a bonus.
My wife is known to most friends and family by a nickname derived from her middle name. She’s known to coworkers by a nickname derived from her first name. I call her by her official middle name as it appears on her birth certificate because when I met her, that was the option I felt most comfortable with. When I asked her on our first date if it would be all right to do that (get the naming thing clarified asap–take note, Jerry Seinfeld), she just shrugged and said something like “Fine with me.”
First name. My middle name is an old family surname, and really doesn’t work unless I become a movie star or something. A guy I worked for in the Navy started calling me by my first and middle initials, which phonetically sounds like a first name. I didn’t encourage it, but it stuck for a few months.
Up to and including high school, both friends and family would try to tease me about my middle name but it never bothered me. I liked my middle name. When I went to college, my Korean fraternity “big brother” did not like my first name but was delighted by my Romantic/Latin middle name, especially so because he had spent the previous year studying in France. So friends up to high school and family call me by my first name but I have been using my middle since college.
My dad had five sons. All of our names start with the same letter except for Junior. Don’t know why he did that, I don’t believe any other parts of his family did that.
A friend’s father goes by first and middle name initials. He gave his first son his first and second name (but did not make him a Junior) and always called him by the initials.
The second son was given the middle name and a first name with the same starting letter as his dad and brother.
He was often referred to as full first name full second name, sometimes just his first name.
I go by my first name. My older brother was known by his middle name as a child. Not worth discussing why that happened but he didn’t like and since going to college switched to using his first name always. Both my sons were known by their middle names while kids and as adults use both. There’s more to that story, but it all worked out well.
Another concurrent data point for the OP: I’m an American, and go by my first name – though, I most commonly go by the typical shortened “nickname” version of my birth name.
I concur with what several other posters have said: in my experience, while it’s not common for an “assimilated” American to go by their middle name, I’ve certainly seen it many times. IME, it’s typically been to reduce confusion or create more individuality, because either there are other family members with the same given first name (including “I was named after my parent” situations), or the parents had chosen a traditional name for the baby’s first name, but preferred the less formal (or more modern) middle name for everyday use.
My ex-husband and both of his brothers went by their middle names around their immediate family. Reason being when their parents divorced their mother decided she hated the names the boys had been given and started calling them by their middle names. Everywhere else they used their first names which was kind of confusing when I first met my ex.
My first name is that of my maternal grandmother, who died months before I was born. My family called me by a diminutive version of my middle name. My mother said that with two cousins named after Grandma, she thought it would be confusing, even though one cousin never left Italy.
When she asked me which name I wanted to be called at school, I chose my first name, as it was prettier. As I got older, more and more people knew me by my first name, and my middle name, which I never liked, didn’t fit me any more. After my mom passed, I told my siblings and niblings I wanted to be called by my first name. The siblings grumbled; the niblings did not.
When I was born I was named after my grandfather, who had died the year before. My father was filling out the birth certificate, glanced down at his monogrammed briefcase, and it struck him that my initials would spell a non-embarrassing body part. Think “Larry Edward Goodman”.
He made the non-wife endorsed decision to flip my first and middle name, and so my birth certificate was issued that way. I was always called by middle name, which annoyed me due to the confusion. Just before I turned 18 I had a formal name change to flip it the “correct” way.
My husband is the 4th male in a row to have the same first name.
Not real names.
Great grandfather: Edmond Mathew Parks. Known as Edmond.
Grandfather: Edmond Clifford Parks. Known as Cliff, to be different from his father.
Father: Edmond Clifford Parks II. Known as Ed. To be different from his grandfather.
Husband: Edmond James Parks. Known as Ted. To be different from his father. Great grandfather was no longer around.
Ted and Ed sound alike when yelled. So both of them would ignore husband’s mom and then say they thought the other one was being called.
Nephew got the famous first name as a middle name. Which is heard every time he gets in trouble.
I go by my first name (mostly its diminutive form); nobody’s ever called me by my middle name, but I use its initial for professional purposes, an affectation to sound more formal dating back to when I was a student. A strange thing I noticed when I was in grad school: There were a lot of mathematicians in my field, including my advisor and his best friend, who had first names beginning with J, went by their middle names, and used J. [middle] [last] in their publications. It became a running joke among us students that that was a requirement to be a successful mathematician.
I’ve gone by my middle name my whole life. I share my first name with my father and my middle with my grandfather who passed a few years before I was born.
My parents and pretty much everyone else have always called me by my slightly unusual middle name. I also use it professionally which matters since my job is somewhat public. My father also went by his middle name.
It’s actually kind of useful since I know any call I get from anyone asking for me by my first name either doesn’t know me or is something legal or medical since those are usually the only contexts my first name gets used. Very few people in my life have any reason to know my actual first name.
Growing up, I was told I could use whichever name I preferred. Turns out, that’s not true: the entire world insists on my first name. I preferred my middle name. Friends and family eventually came around, but officialdom required a legal name change to stop calling me by my first name. Well worth it, but I should have changed the legal name to the original ethnicname and not the anglicized version on my birth certificate. I use ethnicname with strangers, because, ironically, it’s a common one and easier for them to spell and pronounce.
I love my first name. It’s a bit unusual and caused me endless grief when looking for those little name trinkets so common back in my childhood days. Never could find one with my name. Still can’t. I occasionally take a look.
My mother bestowed it upon me in honor of her recently deceased mother. She changed the last letter so it’s not exactly the same. My name encompasses both my mother’s grief and her hope for the future.