Er, my parents and grandparents were Indians living in a Portuguese colony and had middle names of the sort you are terming “exclusively an US thing” and so did all the people of those generations. As do we, but maybe you could claim that we were influenced by USAian culture. But in the 1960s and 1970s we would be more influenced by English culture.
My uncle is another one who goes by his middle name. Informally, he just uses the middle name (or rather, one of the standard nicknames for that name), and most people don’t know that he has any other given name. But he never officially changed it, so he still officially has the first name on his birth certificate, and so on official documents, he’s still F. Middlename Lastname.
And I’ll agree with others that it makes things easier to let everyone know that there’s some other name that might crop up. I spent several years as a substitute teacher, which means encountering a lot of new names on a regular basis. If I have a “Michael Smith” in my room, but the roster says “John Smith”, that causes some confusion. Less so, if I’m comparing “J. Michael Smith” and “John Smith”.
I too do the first initial, middle name thing. Wasn’t my choice, it’s more of a family tradition. There are five (or should say were five) of us with the same first name, so the latecomers all go by their middle names. It’s mostly a pain in the ass.
I vividly remember my first day of kindergarten, as the tech are called my first name out and of course I didn’t respond as I was unaware that I had a different name that the bureaucracy would know me by. The irritation was a low simmer after that, heating up a bit as more and more of my interactions with the world started by filling out a computerized form. I learned quickly to just use my first name for those docs, as if I didn’t, inevitably a mismatch between my entry and my ID would cause a problem.
The advantage all those years was that I instantly would know if someone knew me, or simply got my info from some data source. If I were to get a call asking for my first name, I could immediately say, “He’s not here right now…” which saved me from many a telemarketer call. Occasionally that tactic would backfire, say if my doctor was calling. I’d quickly backpedal, but there was always some suspicion about the guy who first claimed not to be the guy and then suddenly was.
Things have changed some now as there’s more flexibility in some of the record keeping tools. Many now have a field for preferred name. Which now flips things around when I check in at the dentist with my first name. The receptionist looks confused for a moment then says, “We thought you preferred to go by middle name?” and then I realize I outsmarted myself.
0 stars out of 5. Would not do again.
Then there are those named after their father and use the middle name rather than be known as “Junior”.
I would think this benefit would give it 1 star. There was about at least a decade during which spam calls were a bit overwhelming.
My dad was a junior, and he hated being called junior. Especially since his dad dumped his mom. I thought it was an interesting bookend that he and my mom got their wedding license on the same day dad’s mom got her divorce decree (or was in court to get it, can’t quite remember).
I had an uncle whose middle name was different from his father, but it started with the same initial. He really was not a junior, but corporate and government documents nearly always listed him as Firstname M. Lastname, Jr.
I know a guy whose first name is Fallis. He doesn’t care for it.
You nailed it.
This is the only place I will freely admit that my first name is Cecil.
I agree with this. But companies often have policies about how the name is to be presented on a business card (yes, silly) so the employee may not have a choice.
On the other hand, I had a coworker who’s first name was J. He had to go to a great deal of trouble to explain that is the name on his birth certificate.
Odd, that is somehow precisely the same thing with my dad and granddad.
Heh - always liked saying W.E.B. Du Bois.
Chas Chandler was the very, very last person, ever, in all creation, to do this.
An English cricketer would like a word…
My BiL’s first name is Robert. He writes it as Robt. and tells folks it’s pronounced “Robert” . I always say it’s pronounced as “Ribbt”. He’s 87 so I guess he’s entitled.
Totally. If I get any kind of communication for my first name, it’s an instant alert they for sure don’t know me. It gets a little tricky since insurance is under my first name, and I get medical related calls for my kids looking for the parent of x. Then I cop to my first name being the initial.
On my mother’s side, all the oldest sons had the same first name “John” from my g-g-grandfather down to my cousin whose wife said no.
Several of them went by J. middle name last name to avoid confusion.
I’ve never understood the custom of giving the same name to multiple different people in the same family. Doesn’t it kind of defeat the purpose of names if everyone has the same one?
My first name is James, and I have always signed it as Jas. I’m called James (or Jim by people who don’t know me well).
As a teenager I was once given some shit by a bureaucrat who insisted that I spell out the whole name on a form. I said, “But that’s not my signature!” Didn’t matter.
But that’s the only time in more than 50 years that anyone’s questioned it. I’ve had some comments and had to explain a few times that it’s an old-fashioned abbreviation. Usually people thinks it’s cool.
Which George Foreman did you wish to address that to? 
The other thing I was going to add to this thread: a friend of my father’s was Donald Smith. His friends all called him Don. But since Smith is (I believe) the most common name in Anglophone countries, for business and other formal purposes he used his extremely uncommon middle name, styling himself D. Scattergood Smith. Far more memorable. Enough so that I still remember it more than 60 years after first hearing it.