Is there a tradition in the Southern USA that men go by their middle names?
It’s not a tradition, it’s just not at all unusual. And it’s not just men (my grandmother, one of my female cousins and I all do it, as do my father and at least one of my male cousins). There can be a variety of reasons. You can get a first name from within the family (for instance, being named after your father) that is in use by another close relative and so you use your middle name to reduce confusion, or you can get a really horrible first name and use your middle to hide the awful one (even parents will realize that the first name is just godawful), or you can even get a somewhat plain and boring first name and your parents may intend all along to use the less-dull middle name. And sometimes, it just happens. Big cultural difference: in the South, roll call the first day of school every grade (and into university classes) is generally preceded by the teacher saying “let me know if you go by something else”. It’s quite a shock to a middle-named Southerner to move out of the region
There are only three or four women’s names in my Southern family, so there are lots of nicknames and middle names. My favorite: my grandmom has a cousin who looked like no one in the family when she was a baby and so, while she had perfectly nice first and middle names, she was never ever called anything but Jones.
