As a small child I was absolutely convinced that people in the olden days lived their day to day lives in black and white, and that they walked slightly faster than we did today (assuming a frame rate thing?).
I'm gonna put this one down to my understanding of how TV worked as a ten year old. Everything before colour TV was black and white... therefore everything was black and white. Makes perfect sense.
What about you?
I have no middle name but my younger brother does. When friends at school asked why, I spoke to my Dad and he told me it was because they didn't have much money when starting out as a family but had saved enough up by the time my brother was born. I dutifully reported this back to mates who must have assumed I'd lost the plot but didn't bother telling me.
I asked my Dad about it many moons later and he said that he and my Mum had decided to dodge convention and not give us family names (despite intense pressure from my Dad's mother to name me after my Dad and his father and his father). It all went swimmingly until my brother was born and then, immediately after his birth Mum declared he was getting her father's name as middle name and Dad didn't think it was a hill worth dying on. He did say I was welcome to change my name to include a middle one but I didn't think it was worth the hassle. In hindsight I should have agreed and said I'd have his name as my middle name. Ah well.
Saving up for a middle name has to be the best way to convey how much they struggled financially when starting out I have ever seen. Absolute gold humor as well.
I assume I thought it was like a football shirt where they charged by the letter.
Getting your official name changed to xxx "Middle Name" yyy as a joke...
Or have two middle names: yyy xxx. So, when you say your full name, you get to say "so good they named me twice. It'd be immense hassle as every form you fill out would get queried and passport control would pull you over.
It's not too late. There's no real procedure to changing your name, you just have to start using it.
Yes, the whole "deed poll" thing is needed for getting a passport changed/updated, but that's just a letter that declares you're no longer using the old name, for which free legalese style templates are available online. A couple of signatures from people you know that can vouch for the change and job's a good'un.