Originally Posted by GUWonder

It need not match the ticket name but in such circumstance it may be better to match the ESTA with what is in the passport if wanting a minimum of hassles.

Johan for given/first name and Smith for middle name and Anderson for family/last name. Regardless of multiple first names, a secondary first name being made more prominent or having a secondary family name/mellanamn, do the ESTA as mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph of mine. [A Scandinavian "mellannamn" may literally translate into middle name in English but functionally it is but another family name for most people born in say Sweden today. In the US a middle name is most frequently not a family name. And in Sweden, for example, many people have more than one given first name -- most of the Swedes in my family have at least two given first names before even hitting the mellanamn and last/surname fields.]

Once the ESTA is approved you shouldn't have a problem with the airline over the ticket and/or boarding pass showing as you noted above.

You could leave the middle name out, but the way things are processed by or for the US Government's blacklisting/targeting mechanisms, something inserted in the middle name field has a history of being more useful than not.