My head is exploding with incomprehension. You’re saying that if you had named him Ben, it would have been impossible for him to ask people to call him Benji? What???
I just think Mom and Dad may have done the name a girl a classic boy name(or call them that) because it was popular at the time.
There’s a Bette Davis movie “In this, our life” ( I think that’s the name of it). Bette’s character is named Stanley and her sister is Roy (played by Olivia de Havilland). That must’ve been for shock value. It certainly would’ve been unusual at the time.
I think parents are wont to do popular things like that in the heat and excitement of the new babys birth.
They may regret it later.
As my Max is having a tiny issue with her name at school. Her parents worry it may be bullying. Maybe a tad regretful their stressed little daughter is having to deal with the whole thing. Could of been avoided.
But, now she’s our Max, she couldn’t be anyone else.
Alex gets tired of telling everyone her name isn’t Alexis, and “don’t call me Lexie” She really hates that. She’s our Alex now. And will always be.
As I said, do you, name your kid whatever. But do think carefully on it. It could be hard on the kid if you get it horribly wrong. Builds character, eh, not so sure.
Of course, if someone really doesn’t like the name they got from their parents, they can go through the trouble of changing it. Two of my kindergarten classmates decided it was worth the hassle.
Another advantage for my father- if he receives mail or phone calls for James, he knows it’s somebody who doesn’t know him.
Co-signed. I guess the thinking, if any, is that individuals somehow possess “nickname rights” in related names that are shortened from their official given name, but not in nicknames that are longer forms of the same name.
So, for example, someone officially named “Jonathan” would be “allowed” to choose “Jon” as the preferred use-form of his given name, but a “Jon” is somehow debarred from choosing to be called “Jonathan”. “Catherine” can request to be called “Cathy”, but not vice versa. And so on.
Yeah, it doesn’t really make sense to me either. bump’s son Benjamin has no more (or less) legal or moral right to use the nickname “Benji” than he would have had if he’d been officially named “Ben” instead. But there’s a long-entrenched perception that an abbreviated form of a given name is still in some way “the same name” and hence interchangeable with it, whereas an expanded form is not.
Heh! I have a brother Thomas and a brother Harry(not Harold).
I’m between them and was supposed to be a boy.
I was gonna be the Dick(Richard, I hope).
Turns out I was a dick and was born a girl.
So…Tom, Beck and Harry, it became.
I used to work with a man whose legal name is Ricky. Sure, his parents were told “Oh, c’mon, name him Richard!” when he was born, but no, they named him Ricky because that was what they wanted to call him.
I also have a cousin whose legal name is Patti. Again, “name her Patricia” but that’s her name, and even though she’s in her 60s now, she has never had any desire to be called anything else, not even Pat.
Conversely, when I started college in the late 1980s, I had a classmate named Kimberly. All her life, her parents said, “We named her Kimberly because that is what we want to call her” and it really bothered her when people called her Kim; she had to correct our professor more than once.
Some European countries actually do have “approved name” lists.
People in Iceland who want to name their daughters after their Canadian-born First Lady, Eliza Reid, can’t, because not only is “Eliza” not on Iceland’s list of approved baby names, but the “Z” letter and sound do not exist in the Icelandic language.
Just today I read about a 14-year-old boy named Chaos. Maybe they’re related.
I don’t care too much about people naming their kid just the diminutive of a common name. What has always confounded me–and I hope this isn’t off-topic–is when people give their kids a middle initial that doesn’t stand for anything, e.g. Harry S. Truman. I know someone whose middle name is A. It doesn’t stand for anything. I don’t get it.
John isn’t short for Jonathan.
My son is named John.
They are both Anglicized Hebrew names, and the fact that John sounds just like Jon, which is what some Jonathans go by is a coincidence in English. It doesn’t reflect the Hebrew, and doesn’t reflect most other-language cognates.
John in Hebrew is Yochanan (the ch is a glottal fricative, like in the name Bach, the composer), and Jonathan is Yonatan. Yochanan means “God’s grace,” and Yonatan means “Gift of God.”
Don’t get me started on people who name their sons Johnathan. What would that be in Hebrew? Yochanatan?
You win the Dope today!
I think in some Truman biogs they say in was S(no period) after the two Grandmothers maiden names. Or something to that effect.
I have a niece who’s teen boy is J(no period) not Jay or Jason or any first letter from any J name.
He’s just J, his legal name on his birth certificate.
She says she just liked it. And the Dept. of Vital records resisted for many months. But she succeeded.
Think about it. He will be explaining this until they fill out his death certificate. I hope they remember, No period.
Everyone Loves Ray doesn’t have the same appeal as Everyone Loves Raymond.
I prefer seeing a full name like James over Jim on a birth certificate. The kid has more options later in life.
It’s pronunced Hay Zeus not Jesus. LOL, poor kid will be saying that the rest of his life.
Our sons are named Alexander and Charlie. Interestingly, our logic with Alexander was exactly as you describe - we like the full version, but there are many other variations he, may choose to go by. So far, he has always been Alex.
With Charlie, we simply don’t like the name Charles, so Charlie it is. But again he can opt for Char, Chas, CJ later on life if he wishes. Soon after he was born, my grandmother (who is 97) wrote to us to suggest (as in the OP) that we legally named him Charles. We politely and respectfully declined, and there have been no hard feelings.
This is my thought too. We did give our kids the longer name and call them the shorter nicknames, but you could do it the other way around. One of my kids is fine with answering to either name, but the other one doesn’t want to be called the long version of hers. She doesn’t consider ither name.
I changed my name as an adult, and I would totally support my kids changing theirs if they wanted to when they are older. (Thankfully I only had to call my daughter “Cleo” – the name of one of my late cats – for a couple of months while she was in second grade before she went back to her own name.)
As long as you’re not stabby towards me, and use my correct name, you can judge me all you want. (I named myself the name I have now, so it’s all my own responsibility.)
Wow. Those are some strong feelings. I wonder if there’s a generation gap in play. (I’m gen-X*) I know Jack is a nickname for John, but I am also used to it as a name in its own right. And it’s different enough from “John” that it is totally understandable to me that some might like it but dislike “John.” And I neither cringe nor feel offended by seeing Jack, Hank, Alex, or Chris as a given name. It’s surprising to me that anyone does.
*I don’t know how this is supposed to be written.
I was just reading that Johnny Cash started out in life as JR Cash. The initials don’t stand for anything. His mom wanted to call him John, and his dad liked the name Ray, so they compromised by just using the initials. When he joined the air force, he wasn’t allowed to use initials for his name, so he started calling himself “John R.” and later on, Johnny.
I am firmly against the idea that it’s a parent’s right to name their child whatever they want. I definitely think that you need to first think of how the name will be likely to affect your child and only then consider your personal preferences. There are some things that I unequivocally disapprove of: e.g., being given an invented name (e.g. “Moon Unit”, Frank Zappa’s daughter, yes, I know all names were invented at some point, but I think we have very much enough names in existence that inventing further ones will just mark them as bizarre), giving a child the name of an object (e.g. “Apple”, Gwenneth Paltrow’s daughter), giving a name a “creative spelling”, e.g. “Braddleigh” instead of “Bradley”, Allyssan instead of “Alison”. These should not be too difficult to fathom as names that can cause the child trouble and impracticality.
That said, even I will admit that, at some point, what is or is not an adequate name becomes somewhat arbitrary. My opinion on the specific issue of giving a child a diminutive instead of the full form diverges from the OP’s. It’s an issue I’ve considered and, while I don’t wish to state my opinion as authoritative, I would tend to say that, in English-speaking countries, giving a child a diminutive as a legal name may not necessarily be a bad thing, with discretion, I.E., on a case-by-case basis. I have two main reasons for this sentiment. The first is:
I don’t have children and don’t plan to have any, but if I did, I would never give my child a full name I disliked just because I liked the diminutive and planned to use it. So for example, I never really liked the name “Catherine”, and even less so the name “Margaret”. Both are too strong-sounding for me and the first people I associated them were not very nice comic/cartoon characters (Aunt Katrina from “Pound Puppies” and Margaret from “Dennis the Menace”). I have no problem with “Kate”, “Cathy”, “Maggie”, “Madge”, or “Daisy” (a nickname for Margaret evidently from “Marguerite”, which is French both for Margaret and for the flower). Say my hypothetical wife wanted to call our daughter Kate. I would consider it, but only on condition that her full name not be Catherine (and I would consult with people as to whether they think going through life as just “Kate” would be likely to cause the child problems).
My second reason is that, in practice, this full name-diminutive/nickname distinction is more fluid than you might think. “Jack”, for example, has been borne as a full name by many men, even if it originated as a form of John. Or Harry. Harry can be its own form, a diminutive of Henry, or a diminutive of Harold. In the time of the English kings called Henry, it was normal to pronounce the name as Harry. Prince Harry’s full first name is Henry, but he is always referred to as Harry, and in Welsh, it’s just “Hari” one way or another. Furthermore, there are names that originated as diminutives or nicknames, but are well-established as full names. For example, I like “Kathleen” very much, and it has been common as a full name. But it originated as a pet form of “Catherine”, which, as I said, I’m not crazy about. Or how about Heidi? In North America, it is a given name. But would you ever name your daughter “Adelheid”? I certainly wouldn’t. That’s the full form of that name in German, and it was the full name of the Heidi of the eponymous novel. How about Karen? That name apparently originated as a diminutive of the Germanic forms of Catherine. Yet we consider it an independent name today. Or, again, “Daisy”. Does a Daisy have to have “Margaret” on her birth certificate? I think not.
So while I don’t feel I need to give the last word on this, I am not personally against giving a child a diminutve as a full name, though I would advise parents to use discretion and to consider how a particular name might affect a child.
I can understand the disdain for things like naming your kid for example '‘Xchæieleieighy’, ‘oh, it’s pronounced Hayley - no, we just made it up because we’re so creative you see’, because that kid will forever be painstakingly spelling and explaining their name for their entire life, or until they change their name.
But if you’re called John (not Jonathan) or Harry (not Harold), the only time you’re likely to have to explain that’s it’s just John, not Jonathan or Harry not Harold, is when you open a new bank account or get a mortgage or whatever. Any other context, people just call you what you tell them you are called, and accept your name as what you wrote.
These things are the same thing - the only difference is whether or not the name is already established. I appreciate you did qualify this with
But that’s the same sentiment that manifests as gatekeeping in a lot of other places, like whether or not it’s OK for people to put pineapple on pizza.
Only pizza is dead. Putting pineapple on a pizza only directly affects the life of the eater who selected it. Giving a kid a strange name can deeply affect the child’s life.
True, but not all that is strange is necessarily disruptive.
For example what are your thoughts on the given name ‘Summer’?