Yes, that could be a problem.
If a birth certificate says Sally Marie Jones and Sally Marie Jones marries Edward Drake Smith, then starts using Sally Smith as her name, dropping the middle name, at least in my state when she goes to get a RealID she’ll be told no, her name is either Sally Marie Jones upon marriage OR Sally Jones Smith OR Sally Marie Jones-Smith OR Sally Marie Smith-Jones, pick one, but she can’t drop the middle name, those are her only choices regardless of what she may or may not have been using all that time. And she better have a valid copy of that marriage license. It does appear that in this case the names are all similar the human discretion can be used.
I have no idea if men who change their names at marriage have a problem with that or not. They very much might, given the conservative nature of this state, but I don’t know for sure.
If William Conrad Smith on the birth certificate has been signing his name as Bill C. Smith since he was 18 and all his documentation ever since has been as Bill C. Smith his RealID will be presented to him as William Conrad Smith. Will this cause problems? I don’t know, maybe.
If the name on the birth certificate is Zaphod Beeblebrox Autophandeelyamber III but since their late teens Zaphod has been going by Zeke Bumblebee D’amber THAT could cause a problem with whether or not Zeke gets a RealID. This can be very problematic in adoption cases, especially those that were “homebrew” and had some potential irregularities. Or instances where a kid was named one thing on the birth certificate to please relatives then referred to by a completely different name the rest of their lives, including getting ID’s in the name they used rather than the one on the birth certificate. In those cases “prove your the person on the birth certificate or bring in a birth certificate with the name you have been using” would apply. I have no idea how people in that position sort that out, but a visit to the courts as a solution would not surprise me at all.
I know of an instance where someone with (not their real name) Catherine Beatrice Smith who after marriage went by Cate Betty Jones. Her RealID was issued as Catherine Cate Betty Beatrice Smith Jones which was probably some sort of error on the part of the clerk but it was now official. Catherine Cate Betty Beatrice Smith Jones had to go to court for an official name change to straighten it out, a clerk’s error requiring her to spend several months and hundreds of dollars of her own money to fix.
In this state women who’ve been married and divorced multiple times with name changes along the way had better have kept all the legal documentation or they may simply be denied a RealID until they can bring that documentation in. Lost it all in a flood or fire? Sucks to be you, back to court I guess.
Og help you if you’ve lost any official court-issued name changes, such as with adoptions.
Finally, as an additional stupid entry - I know a man who went to get a RealID and was refused, his birth certificate rejected. Why? He was born in December but there’s a typo on his birth certificate. It says Decemb3r. He was told that unless he gets it officially corrected by the court he will simply never be issued a RealID. Period. Nevemind that up until this point the bureaucracy said “oh, typo” and issued with December as the birth month. Human discretion is no longer allowed.
The court system in this state is not exactly thrilled with all the name-change, birth certificate corrections, and other work generated by this strict interpretation of the rules.
And those are just the ones I know about, having overheard those problems while trying to get my own RealID problem sorted out. Which cost me six months and $700, but l was in a situation where, as an example, the document that would allow me into the airport had a different name than the document that would allow me to pilot an airplane, which I thought was stupid and I was concerned that sort of discrepancy, with ever-tightening rules would only result in frustration and road blocks further down the road so I said f*** it, I’m doing something about this now.
RealID is very much a case of “oh, this is easy” until suddenly it’s not.