When people meet me (or, recently read my name) in a writing context, they occasionally ask if or assume that it’s a nom de plume. However, in other contexts people tend to take my word on it that that’s my name. The other day, though, someone was copying my name from a written source in front of him and decided to invert my first and middle names. (He called me by my middle name for the rest of our interaction, it wasn’t just a typo.) I like to imagine his thought process went something like “There’s no way her parents put her through elementary school with that¹. It must be a family middle name or something.”

¹ I love my name. And yeah, it got some teasing on the playground, but have you met me? I probably would have been teased even if I had been the 3rd Kelly in my grade.