My name IRL is a nickname of a various longer ones. I’ve been called different nicknames and full names my whole life.
They knew they were talking to me and I knew they were talking to me. I never could understand why anyone would get their panties in such a bunch over it.
I figured that my parents gave me my name knowing that I would get called variations on it and I guess they hoped I wouldn’t be some oversensitive dolt who used the occasion to be miserable.
You should say “Oh sorry, I don’t go by ‘Mike’. That was the name of my brother who died in the holocaust”
I’m an Elizabeth, so I hear every variant under the sun. Elizabeth, Liz, Lizzie, Betsy, MaryBeth Bethann (I wonder where they get the last two??)I’m used to it, & I’ll answer to all of it, but I’m usually Beth.
If you like me, don’t put me in the very uncomfortable position of having to correct you! :mad:
This should be the simplest thing ever. If I say my name is Elizabeth, then that’s my name. End of story. If you really feel you must confirm that I don’t go by Liz, then ask.
ETA at Janis: Maybe they get the Bethann from the fact that most Elizabeths seem to have Ann or Anne as a middle name? Mine is Anne. Still, it seems like kind of a big jump to get there.
You know, I’ve noticed wives using their husbands’ full first names when nobody else does pretty frequently, but Mikes seem particularly susceptible to it. And they always pronounce it kind of funny, with heavy emphasis on the second syllable while kind of swallowing the K sound. Mi-KULL. Yarrrgh.
How far does that go? Do you also say “Morty”, even though that’s a feature of his accent?
I know I do respect with people who pronounce Laura the same as Lora. but I would have a hard time referring to someone named “Marty” the same way I would someone name “Morty.” I’d be concerned I was insulting their accent rather than using their actual preference.
I like my full name, but I don’t really see any shortening as any type of insult. I guess I might if there was a diminutive version of my name, but, luckily, there is not. The one thing that did bug me was people mispronouncing my name.
I can understand this when you are introducing yourself, as you don’t know each other well enough to be shortening names. But if I want to be your friend, I’m probably going to wind up shortening your name at some point. If that bothers you, I need to know that right away.
I don’t understand why it would be all that uncomfortable to say something. One of my pet peeves is people expecting others to read their minds. I don’t think you have the right to be annoyed at someone over something if you haven’t asked them to stop.
In my youth, I went by my nickname because I didn’t like my given name, even moreso after I started school and had 2 classmates with the same name, and I didn’t much like either one.
Then I hit 19, joined the Navy, and eventually started dating a guy who didn’t like nicknames. So I started using my given name, and it seemed to be the right time to change. I was starting a new life in a new place, and I left behind the shy me with the nickname. I’ve now been going by my given name for more than 40 years, but I still have a few friends from high school who can’t deal with it. Whatever…
I always hated when people tried to force nicknames on me. One of the same-named bitches from grade school decided I needed to have a masculine nickname based on my last name. It never caught on, which was a darn good thing. I had a teacher who thought it was cute to call me by the male form of my name - I figured out some years later that he was a dirty old man and I was just a clueless kid.
But there was one time that I happily adopted a spontaneously acquired nickname. While in the Navy, I was an avionics technician and I was assigned to a team headed by Pete (whose real name was Terry, but he didn’t like his name.) One time, we’d been working quite a while trying to troubleshoot a system, and because Pete was senior, I kept deferring to him, but I finally said “Why don’t we try…” and as it happened, I was right, and we fixed the plane.
Now, Pete was also a bit flaky and despite working with me for several months, he blanked on my name later that day when he was telling our shop chief how I’d figured out what was wrong. He said something like “… so Fred here said we should try…” No, nothing in my name resembles “Fred” but for the next 2 years, that’s what I answered to. I thought it was funny. I still have a mug that says Fred on it. 
I prefer being called by the full version of my name (Emily). My immediate family used to call me Emmy when I was little, though I’ve somehow grown to dislike it.
Some of my friends call me “Em.” I say sometimes that it sounds like they’re calling me the letter M. So one of my friends now calls me “M” when he writes to me. It’s kind of amusing, actually. 
My coworkers are all French-speaking and usually call me by the French version of my name. Recently a few of them have started pronouncing it the English way, and it actually sounds a bit odd to me.
In conclusion, I don’t really mind what version of my name people call me by.
You do know that right away because I told you my name was Elizabeth. If you feel like starting to use a nickname somewhere along the way, ask me.
It does not require any mind-reading to know that my name is Elizabeth because I told you that directly. The problem is not that I’m not sharing pertinent information. The problem is that you don’t like the information you have been given.
As to the second point…I think you need to re-think that statement. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
You’ve often posted about your difficulties with social interactions. Perhaps you might want to consider learning something from threads such as these instead of informing people who are more socially functional than yourself that they’re wrong.
Geeeze Lizzie, Lighten up!
I think a quick reminder “My name is Michael.” Is fine.
I hate my middle name. My family always called me by both first and middle. Debbie Sue. (Not my real name). When I was around 13 I told my family to stop calling me that. I would only answer to Debbie. Not Debbie Sue and not Deb. I stuck to my guns and it really didn’t take long for them to come around.
“Hi, I’m Gwendolen.”
“Hi, Gwen, nice meeting you.”
:mad:
When someone is taking down my info, I automatically spell my first name too, since it’s not the more common spelling.
“It’s Gwendolen, G-W-E-N-D-O-L-E-N.”
They must lose interest partway through, because more often than not it comes back Gwendolyn. Um, I’m only spelling it because it’s different from what you might be thinking.
People just don’t listen. My last name is three letters long, but is spelled slightly differently from the spelling you would expect from the way it sounds.
Way back in the day when libraries would write your name on the check out card, we were checking out a stack of about a dozen books. My mom gave our last name and spelled it. The librarian wrote it down wrong and went to the next book. Mom said and spelled the name again and again it was wrong. Rinse and repeat for the first 6 books. The librarian finally realized what she had done and said ‘I wondered why you kept spelling your name!’.
I’m in the US, but I get that sort of thing, too. My first name is very short and simple, please do not make elaborations upon it.
I have a variant on the OP’s problem called “hyphenated last name”. Let’s say my last name is Smith-Jones. About half the time people either
Look, I know sometimes some idiot programming software is completely unfamiliar with surnames that have things like a space (the von somethings) or a hyphen or some such but the convention is then to make Smith-Jones into SmithJones or Smithjones so at least you have all the alphabetical characters in there. That’s how the airlines have been doing it for at least 25 years, at least.
Oh, and no, you are not required to have a middle name. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that argument. Apparently, there is a contingent of people out there convinced that somewhere in the US laws is one saying you MUST have a middle name, or that you can’t take a baby home from the hospital without a middle name. Please do not make one up for me, or insist that therefore half my surname must be the middle name after all. I know what my legal name is, you don’t.
And the related argument that you MUST go by Firstname I. Lastname.
No. My legal name is my legal name. I do not use a middle initial. Ever. If you want my legal name, it’s all three. If you want to abbreviate it, you may use Middlename Lastname. Those are your two options. I don’t care what your idiot software or its idiot programmers want. It’s my name, and I am in charge of how it gets used.
My husband’s first name is James. He’s fine with being called Jim. Everyone calls him Jim. Well, everyone who met him in college and after. You see, he’s named after his dad, so to avoid confusion his family calls him by his middle name, Joe. Except his sweet, gray-haired mother, who calls him Jimmy-Joe. I think it’s cute.
I called a guy once and asked to speak with Joe. “Big Joe or Little Joe?” Well, the guy I was calling was 6’ 2" and 220 pounds, so I said, “Big Joe”. It took a minute to figure out I was talking to Joe’s dad.
[quote=“Green_Bean, post:44, topic:684536”]
If you like me, don’t put me in the very uncomfortable position of having to correct you! :mad:
This should be the simplest thing ever. If I say my name is Elizabeth, then that’s my name. End of story. If you really feel you must confirm that I don’t go by Liz, then ask.
I don’t like you anymore, ELIZABETH!
All kidding aside, my ignorance fought!
I found it slightly amusing that the SD member that I tried to get a free modem from in the “For sale” section decided to contribute to my thread so I had to mention that.
But the reason other than respect/etiquette to use the name I’ve provided a person was also yours it seems. I’m a rather out of synced person that despite my efforts here and there to organize my life and bring some order to it seem to fail more often than not at what I envision “order” looking like. Still, where I am able I create a “system” so I have some clue how to navigate all the directions I go in a day (physically and mentally). I have used a different form of my name (or one was provided for me) during different parts of my life as a kid I GOT named, but from that time forward I named myself… because each name to me associates itself with a different time in my life I find myself pretty insistent on what others are to call me since to call me a different form is to call me something probably from a different chapter in my life.
Mind you, I do accept nicknames or childhood forms of my name from people that were THERE and learned my name as it was from that time period; it’s odd but not uncomfortable. And when someone is truly special to me I also nick them, but I ALWAYS ask them, “What do you think, do you like it?” I care what people think and I never force something onto them that doesn’t make us closer for the change, friends or not.
I had no intention on sharing this, because it’s really not so important to other’s as it is myself. It’s just as simple as listening to the person the first few seconds you meet them and repeating their name the way it was spoken. Nobody needs to know the rest, I only spoke up because you did Fairychatmom. Btw, if you spot another modem I call dibs 
Heh. My uncle and his son are Big Al and Little Al – both big men but Little Al more substantial than his dad. And not little at all.