Someone submitted something to me with their full name as William "James" Smith. It is required to use their legal name. I continued to use the name "William" on other documentation but William asked me if I could use James instead since everyone calls him James and he uses James for everything apart from legal documents like birth certificate, etc. For my purposes I am required to use their legal name. I told him this and he would not accept that, saying how he uses James everywhere. Perhaps seeing that I wasn't going to accept James, he said that it was a privacy issue and he did not want other people to know his real name.
I have no issue calling this person "James" (and yes these are all made up names) and in fact had been calling him "James" all day. This is for a sports organization. While it is not a government agency or anything, there is a national governing body that has official policies such as this.
The name in the system shows up on rosters, score sheets, rankings, etc. and this is where the person's name would be visible to others. We turn in the score sheets after each game to the national headquarters and if the name differs from what's in the system, the team is penalized.
Sure it's a sport, sure it's an extracurricular hobby, sure it's for fun but this is actually a small business for me and I have to adhere to the national policies. Additionally, I'd think it wouldn't look good to make exceptions for some people and not for others.
I've since talked to the national headquarters and they reminded me that the policy is to use the legal name. They made a small compromise, putting his name in the system as "William James" and informed me that if we turn in score sheets that say James Smith, the team would not be penalized. (EDIT Forgot to mention that the rosters and rankings will now show "William James Smith", but the score sheets we submit may say just James Smith, i.e. the William part will still be visible to others in some aspects)
I did not know how to react because I certainly want to respect people's privacies especially if there is truly an issue.
However, I felt that using the privacy issue was a lie to try to persuade me to get what he wanted. For example, his email address contains "William" in it and he has 2 Facebook profiles: one as James Jordan and another as William Smith. It's not difficult to find the William Smith profile.
How do you react so as to not look like you disrespect people's privacy issues but you think that the privacy issue does not actually apply to the situation?
Follow-up Question: Was it even appropriate to ask the national headquarters? I already knew the policy and was fairly certain they would not make an exception. Does asking headquarters and furthermore letting James know that I tried asking headquarters only encourage them to come up with farfetched/implausible excuses because now I look gullible?