I'm not American, can sb explain what's the problem with "Mary Robinette"?

[Eri]

In tobdays podcast, Mary Robinette Kowal says something like "I had introduced myself earlier as Mary, because here in the South, Mary Robinette is [something I didn't fully understand]". Can someone explain, why having a second name is controversial? It's probably not that important, but I don't like not understanding things. Thanks.

[Quantus]

I live in the South and as far as I know it's not controversial so much as in the south there are/were culturally a lot of Hyphenated first name (Billy-Jean, Barbara-Sue, Carol-Joy, etc).  So when people hear somebody whose last name that also sound like a first name will sometimes miss-understand and think it's a hyphenated first name.  My guess is she was trying to avoid people calling her Mary-Robinette as her first name.

[StrikerEZ]

I live in the south, and I honestly have no idea what the problem with that is. 

[industrialistDragon]

Mary-Robinette's post goes into this in detail here: http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/kowal-mary-robinette-on-the-subject-of-my-name/

Basically, two-part first names are unusual in the US as a whole, but more common in the South, where Mary-Robinette is from. However her two-part name is unusual even by the South's standards, so eventually she felt self-conscious about it and the confusion it caused and stopped using her whole name. She's decided to go back to using the whole name now, for reasons she gives in the post. 

[Eri]

1 hour ago, industrialistDragon said:

Mary-Robinette's post goes into this in detail here: http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/kowal-mary-robinette-on-the-subject-of-my-name/

Basically, two-part first names are unusual in the US as a whole, but more common in the South, where Mary-Robinette is from. However her two-part name is unusual even by the South's standards, so eventually she felt self-conscious about it and the confusion it caused and stopped using her whole name. She's decided to go back to using the whole name now, for reasons she gives in the post. 

Oh, thanks! I thought she might have explained somewhere, checked har Facebook, didn't think about the website.

Here in Poland people use only one name, but some use their second name as the first (because they don't like the first). And some don't even have a second name. Every country has its way, I guess.

Mary Robinette sounds pretty. Though Mary indeed fitted the rhythm of WE intro better, I wish they change the whole intro in next episodes to make it sound good again. Sort the introductions by name length (from Mary Robinette to Dan) or something.

[Robinski]

On 07/01/2019 at 6:30 PM, industrialistDragon said:

She's decided to go back to using the whole name now, for reasons she gives in the post.

Hurray! Quite right too. It's a shame that's she's had such trouble with this. In the Scotland, where I'm frae (there's some Scots for you, free of charge, meaning 'from'), it's really typical to have an accepted Christian name as a surname. My name is Robin Duncan, and I get hailed as Duncan quite a bit by mistake (usually professionally, by people who don't know me all that well). It's annoying, but here in Scotland and the UK we have a saying which I think is also used in other parts of the world, which goes "I don't give a...[insert preferred oath here]".

I'm glad she's Mary-Robinette again. We 'Robins' have to stick together