To really wish my parents hadn’t decided to make my middle name my given name

[abigbloodynuisance]

This has always annoyed me. Names are fictitious.

Name is Anna. Middle name Doris. Surname Donaldson.

Parents realise Doris Anna Donaldson spells DAD and think it’s funny so decide to go with that. But I’ve only ever been known as Anna. However, passport, driving licence, etc, are all Doris Anna.

It’s caused so many problems in big and small ways and mostly it’s just embarrassing having to explain myself. (It doesn’t help that my actual name is foreign so I always have to spell it anyway!)

I know I’ll get people who haven’t RTFP telling me to change it but since my line of work requires me to state any name changes it looks a bit peculiar and looks like I used to be called Doris and decided myself to be Anna and I didn’t!

So AIBU for being a bit fucked off about this? Note ‘a bit.’ I haven’t been stewing on it for forty odd years but it does annoy me a bit.

Surely your name on your passport is the same as on your birth certificate . So Anna Doris. If not get it changed , simple to do to make it reflect your.bieth certificate. You do it all online

Then use your passport to change all documents to Anna Doris so they reflect what you actually go by

This makes me think of a situation we had when I worked in our local hospital. We had a young adult admitted from A & E. However, when I went to order his notes, his first and middle names were the opposite way round. I went to ask him to clarify which order his names were and, to my surprise, it turned out he had a twin brother. One was called Adam Benjamin Smith (not real name) and the other was called Benjamin Adam Smith. When I got the notes, there were actually records relating to both brothers in the file, so the whole record had to be separated into two and different sections amended.

Not that it was any of my business but I couldn't, and still can't, understand why the parents would have twins and use the same names for both. Surely, if there were no other names they liked, they would have called one Adam and the other Benjamin? Some people have strange ideas!

My nan was always known by a shortened version of her middle name. I never knew until her funeral. Think Mavis Dorothy known as Dot.

I use my second name by choice so I sympathise with the frustration of having to explain yourself but it's my choice. I'm thinking of doing the official route not to swap my names around but to remove the first name completely. Would you consider that? It's easier to explain that as never used the first name so removed it to make forms and official documents easier?