I live in Japan and this happens to me all the time. My name is too long to fit in most forms so I have to drop the middle name (which isn’t really a thing here, they consider it as part of my first name), and then they get mad at me because it doesn’t match my ID exactly. I’ve had to redo forms because I didn’t write my name in all caps like the resident card. I’ve had medical ID cards from hospitals that chop my name halfway off and the staff wrote the rest with a marker. It’s a mess.
You might be surprised. I spent a long time carefully and politely explaining to an immigration case officer that "Firstname NMN Lastname" meant, in fact, that there was No Middle Name and not that there was a middle name cryptically encoded as NMN.
A human can do many things, but never underestimate the power of the system (Hello Moloch) to remove said creative abilities from humans. Also never underestimate how creatively stupid humans can be.
There's one thing I at least haven't had any problems with. I have a middle name. I never use it. I always order my flight tickets without the middle name. However, my passport includes the middle name. I've never had a problem with that, in Japanese airports (or elsewhere, for that matter).
Same here, my passport includes my middle name but I always book my air tickets without my middle name. Have had no issues in about 15+ countries with this approach.
I've had complaints but no issues so far when not using my middle name whilst flying.
Middle names are less common where I live. The locals tend to add my middle name to my fist name and then complain that it's long and doesn't match their database at first glance.
