re: #205 danarchy

My mother always went by her middle name too, but that was because all Portuguese women of that generation were named Maria (ok, not all, but an disproportionate number).
It got confusing so they pretty much all went by their middle names.

I’m reminded of my own heritage, in which my first ancestor to arrive in America came from a family in which all the brothers had the same first name and a different middle name - something to do with everybody having a religious or “Saints” name in the Rhineland “back in the day” (late 1600s).

And that doesn’t even touch on more casual culture. I work in the coastal southeast, and not very long after moving here & starting work in a law office, I formulated the Everybody’s Got Four Names theory:

- What your family calls you;
- What your friends call you;
- What they call you at the bar;
- What they call you at the DMV.

I’m not sure yet if four might be just a suggested minimum. I picked up a bar name in my first 72 hours of permanent residence in Georgia, and the rule came about when my then-boss asked me to “call Gator” (me, thinking: “Who the F is Gator??”)… Gator’s real name was that of a famous Scottish hero… And Gator was in our records system as the diminutive of his middle name…

So yeah, in short, names are not something to get in a snit about IMO.