New thirty-day meme

The last thirty-day meme I did ended in dismal failure, but the questions to this one look like they can be answered with more brevity than I was able to manage previously, so I thought I'd give it a go. Thanks elizabethtastic for giving me the idea!

Day 1: Your middle name, and how you feel about it.
My middle name is Middleton, which is my dad's surname. My actual surname is my mother's surname. My parents thought it was sexist for children to automatically get their dad's surname, and so they agreed that any daughters would take my mum's name, and any sons would take Dad's. Luckily they had two daughters, as I think it would've been weird to have children with two different surnames. (My half-sisters have Dad's name.)

I like my middle name, because I'm a feminist myself, and I think what my parents did was kind of awesome. I'm closer to my mum's side of the family, and so feel more of an affinity with my surname than with the name I take from Dad. As a child, I wished that I could have a middle name that was actually a first name, and spent ages imagining what it could be (thankfully, I never changed it legally, as I would've been 'Amber', 'Mindy', 'Tara' or some other name that I liked at the time). But these days it feels like something secret and cool that I share with my sister.

( The other days )