a man who was about to fill in a form asked me "What are your Christian names?"

I once heard exactly the same question being asked of a group of postgraduate students from Iran, Iraq, and Libya!!

On a separate occasion I once filled in a form that had separate areas for Christian names and Surname and, hey ho, I got a letter in reply addressed to me as Mr then two initials and my third Christian name as if it were my surname.

William

In practice, I always ask if there is not a facility to include all three initials to just use the first one, not the first two. Using just the first one looks fine, using just the first two always seems wrong to me, as if it is referring to somebody else, not referring to me.

That seems entirely reasonable. If their system can’t cope with “William J.G. Overington”, making do with “William Overington” has to be better than arbitrarily omitting either one of the two middle initials.

The new Unicode specification has fileds given and given2 and each can have more than one name in each of them, with spaces between them.

So now there is the opportunity for computer systems to get the job done properly. If there does not develop a practice among people applying the specification of only using the first character of the given2 field as "middle initial" rather than using the first character of given2 and the next character after each space character in given2 to provide one or more initials after the first given name.

Not only the items that you name. Also, for example, car insurance document.

I have never had to do it, but imagine needing to produce driving licence and insurance document at a police station and them not both having identically the same name on them.

I say "I'm William Overington".

I am surprised that more males do not have three given names, with names one each from the three nearest male ancestors.

William

Perhaps that is part of why I feel upset inside when people unilaterally choose to omit one of them.

But, I assume,  use of two given names or initials is the maximum allowed by some computer software.

I knew a man who had something like six given names. Could he insist that all were used in a form, based on your logic? Why not?

Certainly, full names must be entered on legal documents like birth, passport, marriage and death certificates. But I think that space is provided on these. Your local store would be quite happy with one given name or identifier. Again how do you identify yourself when meeting someone new. Do you say: "I'm William Overington," or "I'm William J G Overington?"

That concept had never occurred to me.

You writing that comes as a surprise.

Perhaps some people think that I think that.

Thank you for the compliment that you included, much appreciated.

It is just that it is my name.

My three given names are one each from each of my nearest male ancestors.

My three given names are integral to my identity as a person.

Perhaps that is part of why I feel upset inside when people unilaterally choose to omit one of them.

William

An edited version of a person's name is not identifying a person.

But it is for this purpose:

The insistence on using more than necessary identifiers calling for more, or more complex, processing power, has overtones, to my mind, of egoism.

Also, wanting to use only two identifying given names, besides the the family name in not wrong thinking - it is different thinking. The fact that you have three given names is a function of the thinking of your parents, not of your worth, as good as it is.

An edited version of a person's name is not identifying a person.

It is fundamentally wrong thinking.

A person has a name. Names are important.

Nobody has the right to start deeming that an edited version is to be used.

Computers are programmed by people. So the widespread use of one and only one so-called 'middle' initial being used is just something that some of the people programming computer systems have chosen to do.

But the practice of only using the first two initials of somebody else's name, therefore being unwilling to copy a name correctly from one document to another, was often in use before the widespread use of computers, in typed correspondence and such. I wonder why people do it. It seems arrogant and aggressive to me, that they are going to do what they choose to do and that's that.

It is discrimination.

In practice, I always ask if there is not a facility to include all three initials to just use the first one, not the first two. Using just the first one looks fine, using just the first two always seems wrong to me, as if it is referring to somebody else, not referring to me.

William

I think there can be only a small proportion of people with three first names, and while informal communications and grand invitations can be expected to use all three, computer generated forms would have only two for practical reasons.

William