My birth name is James. As a young kid my parents called me Jimmy, but in second grade I decided I hated that. I’ve been Jim ever since.
I won’t go so far as to say I hate James, but I cringe when someone calls me that. As others have said up-thread, I don’t bother correcting people at the DMV or the doctor’s office, but everyone else gets “call me Jim.”
I have a common two syllable first name with an equally common one syllable shortening. People use them interchangeably and I don’t care which they use. Of course my passports and other official docs use the full name.
But I just gotta tell my brother’s tale. I was responsible, although I have no memory of it, just all the retellings. I was 4 years and ten months when he was born. Our parents had told me that if it was a boy he would be named Anthony and we would call him Tony. But when the grandparents heard about this they hit the roof. “Anthony is a Talieniker [Italian, in Yiddish]; you can’t call him that.” In the end they named him Alan. But they didn’t explain the change of plans to me. So for several months (reportedly–remember I have no memory of any of this) every time anyone called him Alan or Al I corrected them to Tony. Eventually they gave up. As he tells it, he didn’t know what his first name was till he started school (and didn’t find out what his last name was till he joined the Air Force, but that is a tale for another day). When he married his wife insisted on calling him Alan.
Wait, what??
Gary. A nice simple 4 letter word. So many people just call me Gar, like it is too much trouble to add the e sound on the end. If it bothered me then I would be bothered by most of my freinds, so I just let it go.
My brother and I have semi-common three syllable Jewish first names. Growing up, I disliked it, because there wasn’t anyone around me with the same name (which was a regional issue more than anything). As I grew older I grew totally ambivalent about it. Both my brother and I are commonly referred to by the one syllable traditional shortening, and I tell people honestly I don’t care which they choose to use in addressing me - so in all but the most formal circumstances, they use the one-syllable option.
Legal name. It’s only one syllable anyway.
I have a five letter, one syllable first name, and no nickname. There is a diminutive of it, but whenever someone uses it I give them the stink eye. My wife never does. My brother had a four letter one syllable first name, ditto. Neither of us have middle names.
Our kids have five letter two syllable first names. One’s name often has variants, but she uses none of them.
My name doesn’t have a diminutive and I’ve always been fine with it, especially since it pairs well with my last name.
But the OP’s aunt was a jerk. Dave wants to be called Dave, call him Dave ferchrissake!
My John was Johnny when he was little, and he still goes by it. Teachers call him John, I think, and people just meeting him assume he is John, but his dad and I still call him Johnny, and anyone who has known him a while does, as he prefers it.
He is 19, 6’2, and about 225lbs. I think he wants to seem unthreatening. He likes puppies, kittens, human babies, sketching, and making models of things with working parts that he designs the electronics for. His hands are the size of platters, but he can do very delicate work.
If he’s questioned, he can rattle off a list of famous adult men who went by Johnny, including Johnny Cash, Johnny Unitas, Johnny Bench, and Johnny Carson.
I just go by my name, but people who knew me as a child sometimes still call me diminutives, or, ironically, by my full first and middle name.
The rabbi of our congregation when I was born had a daughter named Rivkah who was about 10 at the time, and since she had dibs on just “Rivkah,” I got called my full name, “Rivkah Chaya.”
My mother Barbara was ‘Bob’ to her immediate family [and Aunt Bob to the rest]; she named me Robert and called me Bobby. As soon as I was old enough to want to be Bob and stop being Bobby [except to Mom…], I found there were a eight OTHER Bobs in my school class, so I prepended my surname initial and have been Vbob ever since. My pronouns are ‘v’.
My mother was “Bill” to her family. Her given names are nothing like that; her father claimed she was named after a mule.
Most people still know me by my legal name, which I never would abbreviate. I still use that name–it is not a dead name. I do have another name that people I am out to know, and that one is abbreviated in casual contexts.
That possibly sounds complicated, so I’ll give examples with names that aren’t quite mine: My birth name could be Tyler, and I do not go by Ty. But I also have a new name Meredith and I’m often called Mer or Merrie.
I’m unusual as a trans person in that I have a large affinity to my birth name. And I always insisted everyone used the full name, not the abbreviation.
So I have the same problem for different reasons. The only person to ever call me that, was an ex girlfriend (from like 15 years ago), except for one friend who was also friends with that ex, and has somehow come to think that’s my actual nickname. Its kinda weird for me and I’m not a fan. But if doesn’t bug me enough to actual have that conversation with him, and point it out
I have a short, common, boring one syllable name. My two older brothers also have short names, but names that were distinctive and uncommon for when they were born. When I came around, my parents let my brothers give me a name, and I ended up with the best a four-year-old and a twelve-year-old could do. There are two diminutives for my name, but my brothers were adamant that I was not to be called by either of them, so I rarely was.
My wife’s name is also quite common, but she’s always insisted on being called by her full name, rather than the diminutive version, but she’s tolerant of people who use that instead of her full name.
When my daughter came out it was easy for her to keep her first name, because she liked it and it is one of those names that can be male or female. She did choose a new middle name, though.
I have a not-terribly-common first name, which I never really liked. But it’s common enough so that it’s spelled three different ways, and invariably people will misspell it even when I spell it out for them.
I go by my First Initial Middle Initial. Like our vice-president. But I used it long before he started. (No, I’m not J.D. Thank goodness.)
Some names can’t be shortened any further. If anyone wants to give me a nickname they have to add syllables. Luckily I live in Australia where that is done to everyone.
My parents chose to continue a tradition that, while harmless in previous generations, has proven to be a real pain in the ass in the computer age. I, along with my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, am named Richard. Yet as far as I can tell*, none of us have used that name for any great length of time. We’re all part of team middle name, and commonly sign our name and work
professionally with only a first initial. So I am R. Andrew Lastname. And I commonly go by ‘Andy’.
All fine, except holy shit, computers hate that. So I’ve learned to (mostly) respond to either**. Anyone that knows me, is reaching out after an introduction from someone I know, or that I’ve contacted through informal method, calls me Andy.
Doctors, bankers, insurance folks, and any governmental contacts all call me Richard***, so when I heard that name out of the blue, I know its part of some contact that is going to be a pain in the ass, literally or figuratively.
There is a gray area though now. Most medical records have a place to call out a preferred name. I never bother, but at least a few of my doctors have picked up that I go by Andy and entered that on my behalf. Which means more than once, I’ve sat in a waiting room, semi-listening for ‘Richard’ only to leave the staff confused as to why I’m clearly sitting there yet not responding.
The last gift this particular system left to me happened with the Social Security folks updated their login tools, and I could not come up with any way to connect my online presence with my actual SS balances. Turns out my original SS card said “R. Andrew” but somehow the authentication system could not connect that with my drivers license saying “Richard Andrew”. So that meant a long afternoon in the SS office filling out forms to ‘fix’ my social security card.
* I do not actually know for sure what name dear great-grandfather Richard Harl Lastname went by. I is never spoken of, and I do not even know why.
** I’ve worked two different jobs where I went by Richard because I got tired of fighting the computers and the auto-generated nametags and such.
*** A delightful third thing happens. The cashier at a local hardware store, as an example, always has to take a long, confused look at their screen before launching into, “Thank you for being a loyal customer, R… R… Randrew?”
I use my legal first name. Up until the days they died my mother and siblings always called me by the diminutive they used when I was a little kid. It took years, but I finally got my nieces and nephews to stop using that form of my name. Some people who don’t know me well, or who knew me back in high school, use a different nickname – but that one is tolerable.
My legal first name is Michael, but I typically go by Mike. I answer to either name, and being called “Michael” doesn’t bother me, though I’ve noticed that people who call me by “Michael” are nearly always my female relatives, many of whom also append my middle name to it, so I’m “Michael John” to them.