I always despised my name as a child... but unfortunately, I wasn't given a middle name so I had no escape!! Often during my childhood I would just flat-out lie to strangers and introduce myself as whatever the heck name I liked at the time, and then it always caused confusion and embarrassment when they found out later on... I remember introducing myself on my first day of school to a girl as Jennifer, she called me that until we were like, 14!! Then she never spoke to me again because she was mad that I'd lied! Eventually I managed to get people to drop the '-Lee' (I have a hyphenated first name, my mother always says 'We didn't give you a middle name because we gave you two first names!') and have since been known as just Donna, which is acceptable... but it would have been so much easier if I'd just had a middle name!

So I always was adamant that my kids would have middle names so they could 'escape' a first name they really hated, after all, they're the ones who have to live with their name, not me, so I wouldn't care if DD started going by 'Paige' instead of 'Emily'.