A middle name on a ticket is not required in the US, afaik.

I wasn't clear. It's never come up in relation to air travel, but in other common interactions involving ID, like banking or insurance. And it's not obtrusive. Just the "no middle name?" And most every one I know has a middle name, so I get the question.

Yes but you are unique in that your first name and middle name appear to actually be FIRSTNAME MIDDLENAME so you are safe no matter what.

Asian airlines, and particularly Cathay Pacific, care about middle names due to most Chinese names being three characters. There are fewer family names in Chinese than there are in western names, and the first character of the given name within a family is often the same for all children.

Mrs Aus ATC has a hyphenated first name, but no middle name. Invariably a drama, as many systems cannot accommodate the "-". We either just book her with the first part (by which she is commonly known), or sometimes string the 2 parts together.

exactly the same here, and exactly the same when I’ve travelled on Chinese airlines too (mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan alike). I’ve never been on any airline which has raised issue about middle name not being on the booking despite it showing on my passport nd I fly about 30 different airlines every year.

incidentally I hate it when hosts have booked my ticket and included middle name or title as you then need to enter the exact combination they chose under first name to retrieve a booking...

I knew a guy in the RAF who had 6 or 7 first names. He was known as "A to Z B*******"" ;).

My pet hate on name conventions is using firstname middle initial lastname such as Jane B Gomez. I see it a lot in the US. To me it is neither fish nor fowl. Use the name or don't use it but putting the middle initial in is just ugly.

And then some people introduce themselves in that form too. My middle name has the same number of syllables as its initial, so it's not even saving any breath.

Same same. Never ever been an issue

That may be true, but on my many flights with SQ, CX, and TG, I have never volunteered, nor been asked, about any middle names.

The first character of the given name can be a generational name, at least in some areas. Although there are separate male/female generational names. In the area my wife is from it is the custom for the paternal grandfather to give the child their name. So all of a grandfather's son's children will have the same surname and same male/female generational name. My wife's father has plenty of brothers, with children, so she has many cousins with the same surname/first character. If Asian airlines allowed one character to mismatch like European/American airlines tickets would be transferable quite widely through the family.

The above discussion on the intricacies of names in different cultural contexts reminds me of this nearly ten year old blog post, Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names.

The whole thing is worth a read if you’re interested in this kind of thing, and is too long to quote fully, but it is a witty exposition of the assumptions programmers (and all of us) instinctively make on this topic due to our own cultural backgrounds.

I have a middle name but I never use it; neither for air travel - I have never had any issues (I have taken hundreds of flights). Adding the middle name only complicates things.

I guess in the past the language of “booking name must match exactly as it appears on passport” is where I’ve been concerned.

Understandable, but in reality even small mistakes (1-2 characters wrong) are routinely accepted.