Several people in my grandmother's family went by their middle names rather than their first names all their lives, and I'm not sure how to list them.
For example, James Newton Miller always went by Newton even on things like census documents. His daughters Clara Irene and Amanda Leona always went by Irene and Leona, his sister-in-law Eliza Jane Mussulman seems to have gone by Jane much of the time, etc. (I didn't even know Leona, my great-great-grandmother, had a different first name, since it's not used on anything except her birth record and very first census. Everything else is under Leona, and my grandmother was named Leona in her honor, not Amanda.)
If I set those as both their middle and preferred names, it doubles them up. Neither one seems to override their first names, which could be confusing to people looking for them by the names they used for most of their lives. Listing them just as middle names could send people looking for information they won't find under first names. Putting their middle names in the first name field is inaccurate.
I'm not sure how to deal with this issue. I want them to be easy to find - I desperately want collaborators on this branch! - so it would be great if there was a way Leona Miller could be listed as that instead of Amanda, for example. But I don't want to be inaccurate, either.
Any suggestions?