I hope the rest of your trip goes more smoothly, carolinabelle. I bet "Joseph James" and his parents learned a good lesson about following directions!

My grandmother travelled the world using just her 3rd name. Her forenames were Marie Rosine Marceline, but all of her tickets always just had the name Marceline on them, even to and from the United States.

A commercial company I was travelling with block booked 60 tickets on a Ryanair flight from Stansted to Montpellier three years ago and two people had to buy brand new tickets because of name disrepancies (or more accurately, they were bought new tickets!).

One was a lady who was called Edith Jones on her ticket, as that is what she was known as, but her ticket said Margaret Edith Jones and it was refused.

The other was more infuriating as an Anthony was refused as his ticket said Tony. Ryanair said - no go (actually, the duty manager really did say "Computer says NO" - British in-joke, that one). Ironically, they would have changed the name for something like £10 had it been brought up before the day of departure.

Seems like different airlines have different rules.

Might be mostly a problem along the Iraqi-British-American axis, but since most Fodorites appear to be from at least two of those countries, I guess we will have to abide with rigor.