Speaking of names with an apostrophe in them—

I have a similar problem. My father was also named Jim Dixon. (Well, James, to be exact.) That makes me "James Dixon, Jr." The trouble is, computers and the people who program them and enter data into them don't know what to do with "Jr."

Sometimes they add it onto my last name. This makes it appear to the computer that "Dixon, Jr." is a different last name than "Dixon." Or they might add it onto my first name. Some more sophisticated databases actually have a separate field called a "suffix," for holding things like "Jr." or "III" or "M.D."—but that doesn't mean that the people who use those databases know how to use them in any uniform or predictable way.

Also, they might or might not know how to use punctuation with "Jr", and the computer might use or ignore punctuation.

There's no telling where my name might appear in an alphabetized list:

 Disney, Walt
  Dixon Jr., James
  Dixon, Jacob
  Dixon, James
  Dixon, James Arthur
  Dixon, James Jr.
  Dixon, James Robert
  Dixon, James, Jr.
  Dixon, Jason
  Dixon, Jr., James
  Dixon, Julius

Any of those names in boldface might be me.

Many's the time I've been told, "Sorry, we don't have that name in our files," when actually they did have it; they just weren't looking in the right place.

After I realized how much confusion the "Jr." was causing, I tried to drop it from all my official records. But that was difficult, too. Some bureaucrats have refused to change my name in their records; some have promised me they would change it, and then failed to do so; some have apparently deleted the "Jr." and then had it mysteriously reappear at a later date; some tried to delete the "Jr." and ended up deleting my whole file.

I get duplicate copies of some junk mail, one with, and one without, the "Jr."

My advice to parents is: Don't name your kid after his father. If you insist on giving a kid the same first name as his father, at least give him a different middle name. If you insist on giving him the same first and middle names, at least don't put the word "Jr." on his birth certificate. It isn't needed. The government will use your social security numbers to tell you apart. Banks will use account numbers, etc.

If you have the misfortune to already be named after your father, don't tell anyone. When you open a bank account, when you register to vote, when you apply for a driver's license, etc., never write the word "Jr." on your application. It isn't needed. The fact that you have the same name as your father is of no more importance than if you happen to have the same name as some stranger in another part of town.

I wish someone had told me this earlier.