Reader tweets reminded the fact-checking PolitiFact Texas project that Texas voters choose in November between U.S. Senate nominees who don’t go by their given first names.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz seeks a second term against Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who represents El Paso in the U.S. House.

That is, Rafael Edward Cruz faces Robert Francis O’Rourke.

One reader asked on Twitter after 10 p.m. Aug. 15: "Why does Beto not use his real name?" Two minutes later came this counter-question: "Why doesn’t Rafael?"

Each candidate has offered his own accounting for the first name he goes by.

Cruz said in his 2015 autobiography, "A Time for Truth," that midway through junior high school in Houston, he decided to stop going by Rafael in part because he already was often called Felito. "The problem with that name was that it seemed to rhyme with every major corn chip on the market. Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos and Tostitos—a fact that other young children were quite happy to point out," Cruz wrote. "I was tired of being teased. One day I had a conversation with my mother about it and she said, ‘You know, you could change your name. There are a number of other possibilities.’"

"And," Cruz wrote, "she proceeded to list them: Rafael. Raph. Ralph. Edward. Ed. Eddie. ‘Or you could go by Ted.’ I found that a shocking concept," Cruz wrote. "It had never occurred to me that I had any input on my name." He made the switch, Cruz said, though his conservative father initially resisted—especially after his mother pointed out that Ted was short for Edward as in the liberal Massachusetts senator, Democrat Ted Kennedy.

O’Rourke has told PolitiFact Texas that he remembers being called Beto, short for Roberto in Spanish, from his earliest days. After Cruz debuted a campaign song in which the singer says O’Rourke adopted "Beto" to "fit in," O’Rourke responded with a March tweet including a photo showing him as a youngster wearing a white shirt with "Beto" stitched across it.

A search of the Nexis news database turned up additional perspective.

A March O’Rourke profile in the Dallas Morning News said the candidate’s father, the late Pat O’Rourke, who was elected El Paso’s county judge, "once explained why he nicknamed his son Beto: Nicknames are common in Mexico and along the border, and if he ever ran for office in El Paso, the odds of being elected in this mostly Mexican-American city were far greater with a name like Beto than Robert Francis O’Rourke. It was also a way," the story said, "to distinguish him from his maternal grandfather, Robert Williams."

That story quoted Beto O’Rourke reacting, when told of his father’s words: "I believe it, I believe it. He was farsighted in that way. … He loved this community and imparted his love of this community to me. It’s helped shape who I am today."

O’Rourke didn’t always steer clear of his given first name; he was quoted in a July Town & Country profile saying that when he enrolled as an undergraduate at Columbia University, he tried going by Robert. O’Rourke elaborated: "I didn’t want to explain what Beto is and how to pronounce it. I wanted to fit in, and Beto doesn’t fit in… There’s also a disconnect, right? There’s this tall white guy, and he’s Beto." But, the story says, O’Rourke eventually realized that he just wasn’t a Robert. "Trying to grow up, quote-unquote, and have this serious name just wasn’t me and where I’m from," the story quotes O’Rourke saying.

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