I have a common first name for my generation, and my family and relatives called me by my legal name so that’s what I went by at school and church.
Around high school I decided I was grown up (I was 17 dammit!) and declared that everyone call me by the diminutive.
My family was good about switching but my extended family never got it.
In Japanese, I go with the diminutive and a lot of people don’t know my legal name is different. Of course, all my IDs, bank accounts, etc. are in my legal name.
I don’t know about the others, but I remember reading that as a kid, Johnny Carson was always “John”, not Johnny. The “Johnny” moniker was something he chose because he felt it would be good for his image in show business.
I had a college classmate named Kimberly, and she DID NOT like being called Kim, because that wasn’t her given name. Her parents had told everyone when she was born, “We are naming her Kimberly because that is what we want to call her.” I have never met anyone known Randall, also a very common given name in the 1960s, who went by that, either.
I later worked with a man whose legal name is Ricky. We had a customer once who said, “What kind of a name is that, anyway? That’s a little kid’s name” and at one time it was, but his parents also named him that because that’s what THEY wanted to call him, too. His name wasn’t Richard, and I have a cousin who is now in her 60s whose legal name is Patti, not Patricia, for the same reasons.
As for me, my given name is Sarah, and the only people who have called me Sally, which was once a common diminutive, were the mother of a friend who had a sister with that as her legal name, and my old neighbor whose boyfriend was quite obviously autistic (for other reasons) and insisted on calling me that. I’ve been called worse, so I didn’t correct him after, oh, the 3rd or 4th time.
My dad added a -y to the end of my name, so much so that my girlfriend, then fiance, then wife always called my by that name. She couldn’t help herself. It was always “sigen-y”. She tried once calling me by my name….but couldn’t. She paused…then just had to add….-y.
Kind of Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0osNbkyHTF8
My nephew is named Nathaniel. When he was born, and my sister-in-law announced his name, she also declared, “he is not Nate, he is not Nathan, he is Nathaniel,” and made it clear to the family that they were not to refer to him by any diminutive. AIUI, she really loved the name “Nathaniel,” but detested the common nicknames for it.
When he was a little kid, my wife and other family members sometimes called him “Mr. N,” but that didn’t last past pre-school. Ever since then, he’s always been Nathaniel, and despite the fact that his given name is long with three or four syllables, depending on how one pronounces it, no nickname or diminution has ever stuck.
Similarly, a high school friend was officially named Ronny. It was never Ronald, his parents always meant it to be Ronny. He was fine with Ronny or even Ron, but never with Ronald; he hated Ronald (“That’s not my name!”). Apparently, it always took some explaining when he needed some sort of official document. His driver’s license, passport, and so on did bear the name Ronny, but as he often said, “It takes me twice as long as anybody else to get these things because of all the explaining I have to do.”
As an adult, I generally introduce myself as “Peter,” but I just as often go as “Pete” (and sometimes introduce myself that way depending on my mood) and even “Petey” to some. It’s just a word to me, not an identity. As long as it’s inoffensive, I don’t much care what you call me. Typically it works out that friends call me Pete, and close friends will also throw in “Petey,” but it’s not been on my directive. Overall, I probably most feel like a “Pete.” In Polish I most go by Piotrek (Pete), then Piotr (Peter), Piotruszek (more like a Petey) and even Pietruszka (parsley), but that’s an affectionate familial nickname.
This made me think of my nephews, my sister’s kids.
Your remark is similar to what Sis said about her firstborn, whose name is Daniel. He has never been Dan or Danny, he is, and always will be Daniel. And he (and Sis) likes it that way.
His brother, on the other hand, was James for as long as it took the hospital clerk to enter it on his birth certificate. He’s been Jamie ever since (even according to Sis), and he likes it that way.
I’m a Michael. Haven’t introduced myself as “Mike” since 1970. My family are grandfathered in to calling me “Mike,” but nobody else.
My great grandmother thought her name was Pearl until she saw her birth certificate when she got married and learned that she had been named Margaret (so the story goes).
Still counts-- he was known as Johnny for the effect, and that’s why my son wants to be known as Johnny.
Our last name starts with Mac (it’s Jewish, not Scottish, though). Johnny hates when people call him “Big Mac,” but he also hates to say something, because he doesn’t want to come across as easily irritated.
I tell him to laugh like it’s the first time he’s ever heard it, and then say “Just call me Johnny.”
Funny, 20 years ago, he was briefly “Little Mac,” because DH’s reserve company called him “Big Mac,” and then when I was pregnant, and when Johnny was a baby, he was called “Little Mac” by the unit. We even got flowers from them, and a gift, for “Mrs. Mac & Little Mac” when he was born.
My sister-in-law said much the same thing - I told her if she didn’t like diminutives , “Elisabeth” was the wrong name to pick. The adults in the family called her Elisabeth and still do - but she uses one of the eleventy-billion diminutives with her cousins and her friends (different ones for different groups).
Is it OK to ask here:
How/why the prevalent american use of middlename
seems more american than anglosaxon (brits pls correct me) …
I always wondered and the numerous examples in this thread triggered my “asking why” …
If you give your child a two or more syllable name, expect others to shorten it.
That’s going to kind of depend on what you mean by “using a middle name” - if “using a middle name/initial” means using it on employment records and government documents and other places that need to match those documents , it’s going to be way more prevalent than if “using a middle name” means using it in all aspects of life. I’d bet that no more than 5% of people in the US use their first and middle names all the time ( most of whom are probably from places where “Billy Bob” and “Betty Sue” are common and it’s really more of a double-barrellled first name), there might be an additional percent or two who drop their first name and a certain number who have a variation on a name like Annmarie or Marylou , which sometimes look like first-middle ( Ann Marie or Mary Lou).
Lots of people have either their full middle name or their initial on documents only because the first piece of ID they included it, and then everything afterwards matched that first one but they never use it for anything else.
I think this is more common in the southern U.S., especially Texas. I had an aunt named Debbie, and that was the name on her birth certificate.
My father had a similar situation (also from Texas). His given first name was a common nickname for a more formal name. It wasn’t until years later that I found out his first name was also his mother’s maiden name (surname). When I was very young, her mother (my great-grandmother), was known to me as Grandmother [Father’s firstname]. To a five-year old, I thought that’s what you called your great-grandparents. It was only later that I discovered it was actually her surname.
And then you have my other great-grandmother on my father’s side. She was born in Texas in the late 1800s. She was always known to me as “Mimmie.” But her given name according to census records was actually “Jimmie” for some reason.
When my sister went to college, she decided that she wanted to be called by her full three-syllable given name instead of the diminutive nickname she had been known by up until then (since birth!). But she allowed her family (including siblings) to be grandfathered in. Thank goodness—it would be hard for me to change at this point. But her husband and friends she made in college and beyond all refer to her by her full given name.
I tried something similar when I graduated college and joined the Navy, introducing myself by my given formal first name to people I met. But I got tired of it and reverted back to my nickname after a few months. But all of the people I met then referred to me by my given name the rest of the time I knew them.
Stephen: A man with the ridiculous name of “Leland W. Sprinkle”…
Alan: American. He has to be American.
Stephen: American, yes.
— QI
“Enoch J. Drebber — why d’you think Yankees are so keen on those blasted middle initials?”—A Study in Scarlet
I never liked my first name, but there is no diminutive form of it. At one point, my boss in the Navy shortened my name to my first and middle initials and the guys on my team called me that. But when I transferred, it went away. My mother was going to name me “Bruce”, but it was her boss’s name and her fellow workers ribbed her about it, so she changed it. I’m thankful for that, as I dislike Bruce more than I dislike the name I got stuck with.
When I was very young, a friend of my parents insisted on calling me “Trapper Charlie” for some reason. Charles is not my name. He even gave me a mousetrap for Christmas one year; the most disappointing gift I ever received.
I asked my kid sister Ann to confirm this - she replies:
"My mother had a brother named Dick (her twin). And a brother named Tommy and a sister named Betty. Her name was Barbara and she was called Bob. She married a man named Tom who had a brother named Dick. They went on to have sons Dick, Tom and Bob. Her sister named Betty married a man named Dick and her brother named Tom married a woman named Betty. My brother Tom married a woman named Betty who had a brother named Bob and my cousin Elizabeth (who goes by Liz not Betty) married a man named Tom. I had three Uncle Dicks. There were two Uncle Toms, two Aunt Bettys and an Aunt Bob.
Such are the names from our childhoods, those of us of a certain age. Not a Dylan or a Hannah in sight. 
"
I use the single-syllable version of my first name with friends and family, and the full, two-syllable version in the office and with the general public.
I have, like, one friend, so it’s now really weird to be called single-syllable by anyone other than my wife.