This is a classic example of one of the things that can happen to people when parents call them by their middle name. The federal government is the most insistent about "first name and middle initial". Income tax refunds are apt to be written to Faye M. Miller. One of the school districts, the one which required that I get a birth certificate, always used Faye M. Miller on the salary checks. Which sent the principal through the building asking "Who is this person?"
A Graceland friend that I met at conference after 30 or 40 years, known as Tane Mae Inouye was wearing a badge which said Pat. She said she legally changed her name because her husband was in the military and she got tired of being called Jane. A Fairland girl known as Sue also married a career military man and is now known as Gwen, from Gwendolyn Sue.
My World Conference badges used to always come out as Faye, no matter how I registered. When Wallace B. became president, I was determined to call him President Smith instead of Wally from my French class. But the only time I ever registered to speak, my name came up Faye and he looked all around the section for Faye until I came out with "Wally, it's Madaleen." He looked embarassed and apologized, but shouldn't have. It wasn't his fault.
I sat across the table from Grant MacMurray at a Winter Field School luncheon a few years later and brought up this problem of conference badges. He confessed that it was a problem he understood, being W. Grant MacMurray. So every conference since has used a recognizable name.
Mom explained my name thusly. She and one of my aunts, Esther Faye, had made a pact to name a girl baby after each other. So I have a cousin name Dorothy Jewel, from mother's Oka Jewel. But mom didn't think Madaleen Faye had as smooth a rhythm as Faye Madaleen so . . . . . But I was never called Faye. I don't know if she ever regretted that casual switch but I did. But it wasn't so bad. What if my aunt had been named Jimmie!
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