I have a co-worker who goes by “Dan.” Furthermore, he sits right behind me. Additionally, he also does more or less the exact same thing that I do, except he’s like twenty-five years older than me, addled by a litany of physical ailments and is far less competent and adept at the software we use than I am; this is not opinion, it is genuine fact.
Never mind the old man rants that come from him, reminiscing about the days of when Quark was the standard, and how all today’s Adobe software sucks in comparison, or back when he was in the military, or whenever something political in the news happens and he feels the need to voice his opinion to the rest of our group. My objection with him is simply the fact that he goes by “Dan,” because that’s not his actual name. It’s his middle name.
Recently, there was an incident that occurred as the result of the mix-up between “Danny” and “Dan.” I could see this happening eventually a mile away when he hobbled into the office for the first time and was stationed right near me. It was not that big of a deal, but it did create a whole lot of wasted time and work, and in the end my work was deemed to be the standard, but the point remains that such an error existed because of the similarities in name.
Technically, he has been with this company a lot longer than I have, but as far as tenures in the office go, I was here first. The only reason he’s here now is that the company folded up one of their secondary offices outside of Atlanta, and he opted to move to this area to avoid having to go through the arduous and tedious process of looking for another job.
The thing is that I simply don’t get why people like him insist on going by their middle names in the first place. Especially Caucasian people, who often time have very uncomplicated, Anglo names with Christian-biblical origins. Such could be said succinctly about Dan, whose actual first name is nothing out of the ordinary at all, so it really makes me wonder why he insists on going by his middle name in the first place. Sure, I get that he’s probably been going by it for quite some time now, and adjusting to his given name might take some getting used to, but frankly, if we all just went by our given first names, I’m pretty sure complications like duplicate work wouldn’t occur.
Personally, I don’t think I could get away with it. My middle name is just one syllable, but it’s definitely obviously that of Asian origin, and I’d run into my share of people completely butchering a Korean name.
Now if you had dick parents that insisted on naming you something completely embarrassing of amusing to them, but they also had mercy enough to give you a fairly ordinary or less embarrassing middle name, I’d understand. But when your parents open up a King James bible and point to two random books and say that this is your first and middle names, then what does it really matter?
The point of this post isn’t entirely grievances with a co-worker, because sometimes I’m genuinely curious to why people who go by their middle names go by their middle names. Even more so when their given first names aren’t anything abominable in the first place.
