I had a friend in high school whose name was Ronny. It was spelled exactly as I just spelled it, and it was his legal name. It was on his driver’s license, his car registration and insurance, his passport. He was happy with being addressed as either Ronny or Ron.
I was in his car the day he got pulled over for speeding. Not by much, and the cop, after looking at his license, registration, and insurance, let him off with a warning. Ron just sat there calmly, and said, “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” at the appropriate times.
But when the cop left and we could go, Ron was seething. “Ron, what are you pissed off at? All you got was a warning. You should be lucky it wasn’t a fine.”
Ron turned to me and said, “Because the cop kept calling me Ronald, and that’s not my name!”
Well, I don’t know about a generational thing. I’m also GenX. Probably a demographic well represented here, as a median age. I’d not noticed any generational trends. But, then again, I hadn’t been looking for it.
My personal feelings are just as I said: probably being very much biased by me being named “John” as a first given name, but occasionally being known as “Jack” by some people…family and a few friends (or “friends”).
It’s really not my business what others choose to scrawl on their childs’ certificates of live birth, but as a matter of principle, using nicknames as given names is aesthetically unsound, IMHO, and also IMHO diminishes the use of those nicknames in practical settings. As I said, for example, to differentiate various holders of common names.
Jenny from the block. Or 867-5309. Or Billy from around the corner, vs. Big Bill, vs. Bill, vs. Will, vs. William. Not to mention little Billy and his cousin Willie. That does my “point” no favors, spelling it out like that, such that I had a point, but it is pure opinion.
No, it makes not much sense for me to take a hard line, but it does confuse things for me. However, I’m just a simple caveman, and it is perhaps right that I am confused.
After all, Jack Burton, the world was not meant for me to understand.
Here’s one reason, that applies to both me and one of my daughters.
Abridged Name is a name in English, and it’s also an etymologically unrelated name in Hebrew that happens to sound basically identical.
Long name is a name in English, but since, again, the short names in Hebrew and English are unrelated, the Hebrew names aren’t short for anything; they just happen to match.
And then someone comes in and starts referring to me by the Long Name, which is incredibly annoying, because the Long Name is not my name and sounds pretty ugly.
My given name is a very pretty name. The nickname can also be a masculine name. I was NEVER called by my given name by anyone in my family from the moment I came home from the hospital. But I was always called by my given name in school. I always wonder how I knew she was talking to me on that first day of kindergarten when the teacher called me by my given name!! I like my given name and I’m fine with my nickname but I wish I had been called by my given name.
As a hobby genealogist, I’ve discovered that a lot of people’s beliefs about what their own legal name is are just false. My father, for example, has no legal middle name, which you wouldn’t know from his official documents—when he went through Confirmation (Catholic style), he adopted his confirmation name as a middle name, and for all his adult paperwork, people have just accepted that. Neither grandmother used the spelling of their first name on their birth certificate. My grandfather insisted his middle name was just the letter, no period, which may have been the intention but certainly his birth certificate has a big ol’ period. Never mind officialdom’s much more casual attitude to consistency pre-9/11 and pre-computer.
I would say it’s not generational. Just search the names “Peggy”, “Ted”, “Jack”, “Dick” or “Kim” on the Social Security website - all have spent time as fairly popular names over a span of decades (though they aren’t necessarily popular names now - especially “Dick”). Obviously US-centric, of course.
It’s not something I’ve give much thought, but I do generally err on the side of naming your child what you actually plan to call them.
I didn’t mean the names, I meant being bothered by using “informal” names. I’m willing to strictly metaphorically bet that there is much less chance of finding 30-year-olds insisting that naming a child Peg instead of Margaret just isn’t done is much, much smaller than the chance of finding 70-year-olds.
I’d say that’s mostly because Peg has entered into “old lady name” and that there are other diminutives used by 30-year-olds when naming their kids. And, of course, it’s one the less overt ones. I’m in my 40s, but I think I was an adult before I knew Peggy was a diminutive of Margaret - though I was related to both a Peggy and a Margaret (one around my parents’ ages, one older).
But maybe I’m wrong - I’m not around many parents of young children anymore.
Chris sounds better.