As far as I can see from your post you have not mentioned which country you are travelling to . Some countries are more flexible than others with regard to 'obvious' name problems such as the middle name/first name swap , others are not . Back when I was in the industry I would always advise pax to ensure that the name on the ticket matched that on the passport , depending on where you are flying you may be better to bite the bullet and pay for the name change . Some countries permit ( or used to permit , I am not sure in these security conscious days whether they still do ) an endorsement in the passport to say 'also known as .......' does the country which issued your passport permit this ?