My mother has always used her middle name because she simply hates her first name.
My older brother has always been called by his middle name because his first name is the same as our father’s, and it causes less confusion.
When I first started using the internet, I thought that a pseudonym was cool, so I came up with “Angus MacSpon”. Before long, most of my friends were calling me “Angus” in real life as well. (They just started it by themselves; I didn’t ask them to.) I got to answering to “Angus” as readily as my real name. A few years ago, one friend said, in real astonishment, “You mean Angus isn’t your real name?”
My best friend in high school was… well, let me use substitutes… Carl Kendrick Jones. His first name was the same as his grandfathers, so he was/is universally called “Rick.”
I’m not even going to go into how I got a pseudonym on my Social Security account and took almost 35 years to straighten it out.
I abandoned my given name when I left school. It’s a nice name, just hard to live with and not really “me”, so I selected one which I felt suited me better. Most people don’t realise that the name they know me by isn’t my real name. In fact just last week I was signing a new contract and had to get them to go back and change it because they’d got everything with the name I’m known by, not my legal name. All legal stuff (bank accounts, driving licence, passport etc.) are the old name, and my family still use it, but it’s too fancy for everyday.
Lots? It happens here but I would say its still unusual.
The only one I can think of in my family was my uncle by marriage. He had a weird old-timey first name but everyone in the Army called him Tom because that was the first syllable of his last last name. Referring to people by their last name is common in the military anyway. So he was Uncle Tom to me and everyone else. But he never made an attempt to change his name. But people who knew him knew to call him Tom.
I have one girlfriend who always has and continues to call me by my surname. ( No honorific) in all circumstances. I am quite used to it from her and it would be strange to hear her use another form of address.
Its actually unexpectedly mildly erotic in some situations.
Have always gone by my middle name. It was decreed when I was a young un by my paternal grandmother, that he’s no ‘firstname’, he’s a ‘middlename’. I agree to it, I actually like my middle name. It has caused some confusion as when we were graduating in 8th grade and the teacher just asked for our ‘middle names’, so i gave him my first name. Made for a fun diploma.
My father-in-law goes by his middle name. His first name is also his (late) father’s first name; when he was growing up, everyone called him by his middle name, to distinguish son from father.
My husband goes by a diminutive of his middle name. He shares a first name with his father, so it would have been confusing for them to go by the same. Plus? The shared name is Alvin. Tony hates it.
My father was a Junior. Fortunately for Daddy, my grandfather was known by his middle name - Grady. Daddy went by their first name: Henry.
My other grandfather also went by his middle name, which wouldn’t have been my choice if I had been him. His name was Robert Maurice.
And just for fun, no one in my Grandma’s family was known by their legal names - nicknames all the way. I was an adult before I realized that their names weren’t Jeff, Pat, Buddy, Mutt, etc., but Lillie Mae, Michael, Mittie, and Agnes.
My best friend is the fourth generation of first born sons of the same first name- middle name. Thus he goes by a diminuative of his middle name just to keep things straight. Legal documents aside, if somebody ever said his first name aloud he wouldn’t turn his head thinking they were adressing his grandfather.
My Dad was a jr. (John) and hated it. Therefore I’m not a third. However my uncle named his son my age John in honor of his father. My stepsister married a John, son of a John. Girl cousin married a John. Family gatherings are an I Love Lucy sketch sometimes.
Nicknames are funny, there are a slew of people in real life that do call me Goob that have no idea what my real first name is.
Last example a friends’ Dad is from Thiland. Eventually I found out his name is Verivat. (sp?) Everybody in America calls him Bud.
Wait, one more funny story about names. 20 years ago when I was in the Navy we had a friend with the middle initial L. He refused to say what it was. His roommates rifled his wallet when he was asleep to look at his drivers license and it only said L. They bribed the personell clerk to see his service record, still only the initial L. Curious. In desperation they finally called his Mom in Iowa. She relented and told what the old family name was. LaVerne.
