When I was young, I really disliked my first name. When I moved to a new school for the eighth grade - when self awareness on these sorts of things peaks. I made an effort to use my middle name, but it never caught on. It just made things worse at the beginning of every class, when teachers called roll - it only seemed to broadcast to the class the fact that I disliked my actual first name.
At the end of the day, only close friends and some family still use my middle name. I no longer feel too strongly about it, and have never bothered with a name change. It got tiresome to constantly insist on my alternate name all through high school and in my former jobs.
Now, as an adult, I work with people who manage to use a middle name or alternate name to their first name - and no one seems to notice the first name, even if it often pops up - for instance in email names or other official use.
Why are some people successful at establishing alternate names? Perhaps their schools allowed for this? Or they were just more hard-headed in insisting on the alternate name. Are there places or settings where this happens more easily?
I go by my middle name because that’s what I’ve been called all my life. I introduce myself by that name and most people not in my family don’t even find out what my first name is until someone tries to call me and asks for me by the official name of record, say for banking or government purposes, or HR at work.
You can use any name you like. But the ones on your birth certificate are more helpful for official documentation.
I have a multi-barreled name. I only use two of them for normal purposes - first and last. I use all of them in Court and I use variants for the odd nefarious purpose. These are all perfectly legal usages.
I think schools no longer care about calling the student the official name. I had lots of kids who went by another name. When I called roll on the first day, I would just tell the kids to let me know what they wanted to be called, and I’d make a note. I wasn’t really good about going back and forth, though. Once you told me you were Sally, I didn’t want to go to Jane in a month, then back to Sally the next month.
Parents sometimes want the child to go by the middle name, also. My husband worked with a man who had three kids, all with perfectly nice first names. The man and his wife used the middle names of the children from birth instead. I’m not sure why they didn’t name the kids those names in the first place, but they didn’t.
My cousin wanted to be called a different form of her name when she was in junior high, too. Say Maggie instead of Meg. I was enough older than she, and saw her so infrequently, that she has stayed Meg to me. Her immediate family and friends were able to make the change. It’s funny, but by 20 or so, she went back to Meg, and now she is called both, depending on who is speaking.
My hubby was given his Dad’s name, but not wanting confusion in the house, or the son to be called junior, they always addressed him by his middle name. It was the name the school used etc.
Then, one summer, he was given a second hand gas jockey shirt with another name embroidered on the pocket. And everyone found it amusing to call him that name. Ha, ha!
Well, it stuck. Like glue. It took on a life of its own actually. When I met him, I knew him by that name. But his family call him still by his middle name. And, of course, his ID is actually in his original given name.
So, when I call the pharmacy, or Dr’s office for something, I have to say, ‘It could be under X, or Y, or even Z.’
It’s incredibly irritating and confusing for everyone. Which is kind of ironic as it was initially started to avoid the confusion of two ‘Tom’s’ in the same house!
Even more ironic he has a nephew named after him (middle name!), and so now the family DOES have two of the same name, and the resulting confusion. To the point where they have also adopted the later acquired moniker.
And so, often when crossing borders and filling out the associated paperwork he finds he must declare each ‘alias’.
I hear ya. Except I hated my first name all through to adulthood. To me my birth name sounds like fingernails scraping down a blackboard.
Starting in Grade 2 I managed to get teachers to change it on the attendance, then eventually was able to get my ID in my preferred name. The only ID that had my birth name were my Passport, Birth Certificate and Driver’s License. I finally spent the money and got my name legally changed in 2009 so all my ID & credit cards would have the same name for traveling. It’s absolutely wonderful to never be called the full name again.
My little brother’s name is Larry. In grade school he had a teacher who insisted on calling him Lawrence. Our mom eventually sent a copy of his birth certificate to prove his name was what he claimed it was. The teacher still disagreed,
How odd, the things you remember. When I was in the first grade, a teaching assistant was writing our names on the back of our workbooks. On mine, she wrote, “Julia.” I corrected her, saying that my name was “Julie.” She informed me that Julie is just a short version of the name of Julia. I insisted that my real name was Julie, and she finally changed it, but was not the least bit gracious about it. Bitch.
My father was like that. It’s amazing that people can’t comprehend that what’s usually a variant of a name can actually be the person’s legal name. Seeing “Larry” on a birth certificate should settle it conclusively. Even 20 years after my father’s death, I still get mail for him, sent to “Lawrence”.
My first name is actually hyphenated, Peter-Paul. And the second part is the first name of my brother. And my middle name is King, which is a dogs name. Plus, going by the initialed name P.P. Bites did not appeal to me…EVER!
So I never in my life actually went by my full first name and rarely give out my middle name. I’ve either just been Pete or PK my entire life.
Wouldn’t know. I never went by it. As I previously said, my younger brothers first name is just Paul, so I never used my first full name to avoid confusion.
But most importantly, I didn’t want to be a candy bar! :mad: :smack:
I remember a sort of encounter with a guy named R. Brian Hackenberger, which sort has a meter to it, but every time I heard the name uttered, I always heard “Our Brian Hackenberger”, so it was kind of disconcerting.
We used to ride county buses to provide security on certain routes. I had just hopped off a bus outside the movie theater at a mall and another deputy arrived and says to me “I can’t stand pop corn”.
I said “really? I love it. especially the smell”.
He replied “You like the way Bob Torne smells?”
D’oh!:smack: I thought he said pop corn! And the fact that we were right in front of the theater must have reinforced it into my brain!
We had a good laugh over it and from then on a trend started where Bob Torne was nicked named “Pop” and the goofy SOB never knew why we called him that.
When I was in the fencing club in college, there were two people named Matt. Our team captain decided to fix this by renaming one of them “Chuck.” (There was zero relation there between that any any of his actual names.) And darned if it didn’t work. “Chuck” is still known by that name today by most people who met him through fencing from that time period.
It was just so convenient to rename one of the Matts rather than suffer confusion.
