My Mom has a fairly common name (at least for her age), but she spells it in an unusual way. I always thought about my grandmother choosing this unique name for her – it actually seemed like something she would do.
Of course, as it turns out, my Mom’s name is spelled the ordinary way on her birth certificate. But like the OP, when she got to 8th grade, she wanted to be different and cooler, so she started spelling it differently. Somehow it managed to stick for 66 years and counting. I’ve never seen any document of any kind that has the original spelling.
My parents always called my middle name “N” even though my first name is “S”. My work email is S faulkner@blahblahblah but people know me as N so they try N faulkner and it never gets to me, thereby allowing me to dodge a lot of work.
In high school a group of us got to talking about our middle names, and one guy reluctantly offered that the name we all knew him by was his middle name.
He explained that “for about 300 years” the first-born male in his family had been named Carl, but called by his middle name. He said his school records just listed his first initial and full middle name (to facilitate teachers getting it right when calling attendance and such).
I’ve got an aunt who was named for her mother. When she was getting married, her husband had a sister or cousin with the same name who had a bit of a reputation. My aunt did not want to ever be confused with that other person with the same last name, so her married name is her former middle name.
My brother had a largish circle of friends in early-adulthood, and somehow wound up topheavy in guys named Mike. At one point there were seven of them who hung around regularly.
When there were only two, it was easy to keep them straight: the one much younger than him became “Little Mike”, while the one a bit older than him was “Big Mike”.
The next one to join was “Medium Mike”, although more often called by his first and last names. I forget the nicknames for some of the others, but @6 was in ROTC, and was called “Rot-C Mike”, or more often just “Rot-C”. I was there when #7 introduced himself to the group and said his name was Mike. Someone said, “You can’t be Mike. We already have like six Mikes.” He didn’t miss a beat, and said “Then call me Zach. I’ve always admired that name.”
And for YEARS all, or at least most, of his friends called him “Zach”. My brother would occasionally use his full name when talking about him, and would have to add “You know, Zach” for people to know who he meant.
The guy I still think of as “Little Mike” has a son named Mike, who isn’t particularly little anymore either.
My family had a tradition where the first born male in even numbered generations was named for his father but called by his middle name. This lasted until my grandfather reached adulthood and decided to go by his first name (for various reasons), and then re-used his first name for his son, changing the middle name. My father had never liked his middle name, so while he named my oldest brother after himself he called him by his first name. And then my brother, like my grandfather, re-used the first name and changed the middle for his own son.
As a result, when someone in my family uses the name “Johnny”, you have to know which generation they are from to know who they mean. In a nutshell, “John” is from your generation, “Johnny” is one generation younger. Folks a generation or more older than you are not called by their first name, and folks more than a generation younger than you get called by their first and middle name, if their first name alone could be confusing.
This can happen if you have a “foreign” name that is difficult for locals to pronounce. If your passport says that you are “Boing-Chow Hsee Ding-Ran” but ask your friends to just call you Bill Ran, they will usually do so :).
I have been really hardheaded about people using the name I prefer. Every once in a while some well-meaning white person will ask me how to pronounce my “real” name, or even try to pronounce it at me (and they invariably fail). I put on a weak, polite smile, and inform them of the name I prefer to be called. I don’t hesitate to correct people, and I even ask doctor’s offices to call me by my nick.
I have a beautiful first name and I choose not to have it mangled at me.
As a substitute teacher, I see many different class attendance lists. Most of them will have one or two names crossed out in pencil and with a different name written in next to them. Sometimes it’s a variant of the original name (“Maggie” instead of “Margaret”, or whatever), and sometimes it bears no relationship at all. I’m guessing those are mostly middle names.
And when I was in grad school, one of my classmates had the first name “James”. But he was sick of always being mixed up with other Jameses, and so he decided, grad school, new life where nobody knew him yet, it was the perfect opportunity to do something about that, and so he started going by his middle name, “Lewis”. Only to discover that his new department didn’t have a single other James, but did already have a “Louis”. It got especially confusing when he married a lady he had known from undergrad, and she moved to town, having only ever known him as “James”.
It happened to me once. I had a co-worker named Bill. One time I was filling out a form that listed people by their first initial and I put W. down for him.
Bill saw it and told me that his legal name was Bill not William. I said “oops” and changed it. He said it was no big deal because a lot of people had made the same assumption.
A few months later, I was present when another co-worker did that same thing and called him William. Bill again explained his name was Bill. But this other guy said “Yes, but Bill is short for William.” Bill said, “I know what my own name is.” I added, “I made the same mistake a few months ago. But when Bill corrected me, I didn’t try to argue the issue.”
I got used to the old “tell the teachers what name you wanted”, but, they would always say that after they called my shit legal first name. “X harry”…everybody would look around, and I would have to say “I prefer Y”. Already I was busted, and the little scamps would mock me.
When I got to college, I learned the trick of going to the professor before class and letting them know. Then, I decided to brass it out, and be called exclusively by my first name. So, one class the professor said the usual “if you want…another name…” Nope. I stuck to my guns. Unfortunately, I had emailed the professor by an account with my preferred name. While calling roll the second time, he said “I seem to recall that your email was different…would you prefer to go by Z?” Relieved, I said “yes”. Then, the fucker started on a rant about my strange first name, and compared it to the Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue”. Great laughs were had all around at **handsomeharry’s **expense.
Finally changed my name about 2 years ago. Had I known it would be so cheap and easy, I would have done it 40 years ago.
I tried to get people to call me “Jon” once upon a time. It didn’t work, mainly I think because it didn’t actually suit me. i think it is telling that people who get to know me well invariably call me “Jonno” and often come to that nickname independently. I guess I suit it somehow.
This reminds me of a HS classmate of mine whose name (on his birth certificate) was Ted. The physics teacher wouldn’t accept this and insisted that his name was Theodore (or maybe Edward) and always called him that. He refused to answer to it.
That teacher was an asshole and not only for that.
