<rant> Round I'm-tired-of-counting of the federal government taking away my name or limiting my rights. What this time? This time, I discovered two weeks after applying for a passport book and card that the card limits the first and second names to a total of fifteen characters. Also, the OCD feds insist that the passport book and card use the same name.
This little detail gave me two options: shorten my name (for example using just an initial for one of the middle names), which would make it differ from my Social Security card (great idea! When I want to draw benefits I can't imagine that would be a problem!) or withdraw my application for the passport card (the book has no length limit). So, no passport card for me - my name violates their utterly authoritative idea of what a real human's name should be.
Round N-1 of the federal government taking away my name came in the mid oughts, when George Bush of beloved memory decided that only terrorists - TERRORISTS, I TELL YOU! - could possibly want to use more than one name. When my purse was stolen in 2006 the DMV gently informed me of the problem, which meant I could use either my married name (going on for thirty years this December) or my professional name (about as old at that point) just not both in different settings. In other words I couldn't really be a scientist and a mother; I was just lying about one of those and I had better decide which one I wanted to abandon forever thankyouverymuch.
It's not just the feds, of course. The reason my name was inhumanly long for a passport card was that I wanted to include my maiden name and first married name as middle names. (Forget my actual, birth certificate middle name - that got squeezed out long ago.) I am only juggling names at all because I first married long ago enough that keeping my maiden name was unusual and difficult. I would have happily ditched that first married name when that guy decided to ditch me - except for the small problem that I had published a number of papers in good journals under it. So for about a quarter of a century my professional work appeared under the name of a man who had broken his promises and betrayed my trust.
My maiden name might have been worth fighting for at this point if not for a comment by my father. Around 1980 he mentioned he was worried that perhaps his line would fail - only one of my two brothers had married and had children (two daughters) at that point. The other was a vagabond in Alaska. "Don't worry, Dad!" I said blithely. "I might have some sons."
"Oh, but they wouldn't count."
I doubt my father ever knew how deeply he wounded me that day. It certainly clarified things, though.
I didn't even really have a first name, all that much, until recently. My parents gave me my paternal grandmother's name and it was difficult for my father, the parent I was closest to, to call me by it. I can hardly remember ever being called anything but "gal' by him.
</rant>