Sometimes people ask me if Jesse is short for something. I tell them it’s Jessopolous. Sometimes people call me Jess, and I let it slide because I figure I might have just not heard the final e.
If I have kids, I’m going to give them names like Elizabeth and William and Alexander so they have a lot of options for diminutives.
Hey, monster, I think of Mandy as an affectionate nickname. I call my friend Amanda Mandy-Bob.
I’m Colin. Only two people in my life have come up with a short version, and I didn’t encourage it. I kinda liked not having a nickname.
My mom calls me Peter
To everyone else I’m Pete
[Danny Vermin]Nobody calls me Petey, my grandmother called me Petey once … ONCE[/Danny Vermin]
It’s always got to be the short version of my name. Hearing the full form of my name means I’m in trouble!
I used to keep a very short list of the people who were allowed to use my full first name. I usually go by the short form of my name. The exceptions are for business, and usually only when dealing with foreigners.
Just Jeff. If you choose to call be Jeffrey, that’s fine (but spell it with the ‘r’ before the second ‘e’, dammit). Call me JT, if you want, although nobody does. Some of my friends call me Jeffy, which is fine too, as long as you’re a friend. But normally I go by Jeff.
Don’t ever call me Yeff.
When I write it out, it’s Benjamin. I introduce myself as Ben, and that’s fine. I like hearing Benjamin, but don’t insist on it (but when a cute girl spontaneously calls me Benjamin, I get all weak in the knees :)).
Well, I’ve got a grand total of 4 syllables in my entire name (first =2, middle and last = one each), you’d think I’d hold on to them for dear life.
However, folks often call me by my last name (tho’ I’m female), and there’s a whole lotta folks that knew me in high school and college who refer to me with just the first syllable of my first name.
When signing it, I use the first initial and full last name, and I often refer to myself that way as well.
When I was growing up, my older sister couldn’t pronounce my first name, so I was always “Laurie”. Now I always go by my full first name and the only person allowed to call me “Laurie” is my sister, though cousins get a little slack.
I do have to correct people a lot of time though as I get called “Laura, Lauren, Loreal” or other weird versions of my name. Is “Laurel” that hard to understand/pronounce?
OK, just because you’s my friends and all.
I was named after my father’s favorite uncle, Jerry. Now that of course is waay to informal of a name and it would be terrible
to give a child an informal name (you’d have to have known my dad), so my real name is… Jerome. Yep I’m a white boy in
ultrasuburbia with the name Jerome. But that’s just a name on documents. Everyone that knows me knows me as Jerry.
And there’s more to the story -
A couple of months ago, I visited with Uncle Jerry’s son and found out that Jerry’s name wasn’t really Jerry. Apparently
when he and his brother were younger they saw a vaudvillian show including a ventrilloquist with a dummy named Jerry. The
brother started calling Jerry, well, “Jerry” and it stuck.
So, my fellow Dopers, not only do I have a stupid full name, but I’m also named after a dummy. Now I know how the George W.
Bush Expressway must feel…
I have to go by my full first name because there isn’t any way to shorten it, and my middle name is a family name which doesn’t really work as a first name for a girl. I’ve always wished my parents had given me a name I could play around with, like Katherine or Elizabeth, but there just isn’t much you can do with the one I got.
James. I won’t respond to Jim and I may get violent towards anyone who tries Jimmy.
If I introduce myself as James, then don’t be presumptuous and call me Jim. If you knew me well enough to use a nickname, you’d know I don’t go by Jim. The false familiarity grates my nerves.
Erika, though being 3 syalables long, doesn’t lend itself to particularly normal shortenings…though I do answer to both E and Er, and even W (last initial) I generallly go by Erika. And sign with a middle initial.
When I was growing up I was “Debbie”. Then when I was about to be married I was saying my soon to be name and it had a sing-song quality sorta like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck. I said no way–so I started demanding to be called “Deborah”. When I got divorced I kept the last name. But became alot less strict about what people call me. Plus there are alot of Debbie’s out there–on the floor where I work there are 4 of us and it gets confusing sometimes.
I will now introduce myself as “Deborah” and answer the phone as “Deborah” but sign all of my e-mail “Deb”. But don’t really care what you call me. I will even tell people it doesn’t matter–Deb, Debbie, Deborah, hey you. I have even been called D-squared. I have a friend who calls me Debs and I like it. She says it with her Jamacian accent and it sounds cool. I have even answered to Barbara (a gentleman I work for got confused a few times and called me that and so when I figured out it was me he was talking to, I answered, no big deal).
Not that it matters, but I think I prefer hearing “Deb” but when talking to myself I always say “Deborah”.
Only if that’s what they’re resting on.
…And it’s a good thing I’ve seen your picture, TM, because if I hadn’t, I’d be picturing you as a goofy-looking skinny guy in a rumpled suit and bowler hat, with a large, similarly-dressed companion answering to “Oliver”.
Grave trouble. Die Fledermaus, die!
Marty is not acceptable. Ugh. (Neither is Polly for that matter.) 
Ugh. Ditto. I hate hate hate being called Liz.
I hate hearing someone else being called Liz, too.
For all of you who think that it would be oh-so-lovely to have a name with lots of nicknames like Elizabeth, well, let me tell you something: It sucks if you hate hate hate the most obvious nickname. And nobody ever automatically shortens it to anything other than “Liz,” so all those other possible nicknames are irrelevant.
Well, El, what did you expect?
You could be a Lizzie. Or how about Lizard for those formal times?
[sub]Just teasing, oww, quite hitting me[/sub]
YEESSS!!
Finally more of us with the “odd spelling” there are 16 different ways to spell that name I have been told.
I went by Kathy until 1st grade then had a classmate with the same name steal my faux fur warm coat 
I didn’t want to be called that ever again. Then in JHS and HS it was Katie. College and first 2 jobs-Kate. Back to Kathryn --I like being me now.