Basic Trope: Someone goes by their middle name.
- Straight: Rebecca Alice Stringer goes by "Alice".
- Exaggerated: Everyone on the planet goes by their middle names.
- Downplayed:
- Some people call her by her middle name, while most do not.
- Rebecca is occasionally called "Al" as a reference to her middle name and an Affectionate Nickname.
- Justified:
- Alice simply likes her middle name better than her first.
- There is more than one Rebecca in town, but she's the only one with the name Alice.
- Inverted:
- Subverted: Rebecca Stringer goes by the name "Alice", so the reader assumes this is her middle name, but it turns out that she just likes the name.
- Double Subverted: She eventually adopts "Alice" as part of her legal name but makes it her middle name.
- Parodied: Rebecca Stringer insists on going by her newly self-chosen middle name, Shmebulock.
- Zig-Zagged: As a child, Alice went by "Alice". However, during her teen years, she went by "Rebecca" to distinguish herself from her childhood and establish herself as a teenager. But, by adulthood, she's returned to "Alice".
- Averted:
- Rebecca never goes by her middle name at any point.
- Rebecca doesn't have a middle name.
- All the characters in the work have Only One Name — no middle names or surnames.
- Enforced: During pre-production on a show, a character is given the name "Rebecca Alice Stringer". However, most of the writers don't like the first name Rebecca and prefer Alice. As a compromise, everyone calls her "Alice" but will occasionally bring up that her first name is Rebecca when it's relevant to the plot.
- Lampshaded: "Everyone calls me by my middle name, Alice. My first name's actually Rebecca, but no one uses it."
- Invoked: When young Rebecca's father kidnapped her in the midst of an acrimonious custody battle and whisks her away to a different country, he forces her to go by her middle name "Alice" and take a different surname "Kenyon" to avoid detection by her mother.
- Exploited: Rebecca occasionally uses her middle name "Alice" instead of her first to get into specific places without her parents' permission, so they won't click on if they try to figure out what she's doing.
- Defied: Rebecca is too much of a traditionalist to go by her middle name and always go by Rebecca.
- Discussed: "Would you only want to go by your middle name?" "Depends on who I am talking to."
- Conversed: "A lot of people go by their middle name in real life, but you don't see that often on TV. What's with that?"
- Played For Drama: Alice's late abusive mother was named Rebecca and she decided to go by her middle name instead after the woman died to distance herself from her.
Back to Middle Name Basis.
