Seriously - there are so many other options.
Rick is decent. I actually like Rich quite a bit. Richie is OK. Full on Richard is delightful.
So why do these fellas choose Dick?
I have to say, if one of the short forms of my IRL name was Twat or Pussy, I think I’d go ahead and spell it out completely, ya know?
I thought Dick fell out of fashion. Have never met anyone under 40 who goes by Dick.
What gives you the idea that people choose their nicknames? When I was young, I was called Joey and I disliked it a lot.
It’s a perfectly good name, and the fact that it has aquired another meaning doesn’t change that. The fact that people refer to the bathroom as “the john” hasn’t seemed to have affected the popularity of the name John.
Mention someone like Dick Van Dyke or Dick Clark and the other meaning of “dick” never even occurs to me. Maybe you just have a dirty mind. 
Well, you don’t have to be such a … oh never mind.
Well I’m not talking about people who have a nickname thrust on them. I assume when you met someone new you didn’t shake hands and say ‘Hi, I’m Joey!’ if you hated it - you would like say ‘Hi, I’m Joel.’ and if people chose to nickname you it was on them.
However, I’ve had lots of men introduce themselves as Dick. ‘Hi! I’m Dick Knight!*’ I assume if the guy hated it perhaps he would introduce himself as Rich or Richard or Rick.
Actually, I was reading the ‘WTF Names?!?!’ thread in MPSIMS and I was curious.
Furthermore, apparently dick = penis for quite some time:
from here:
meaning that men were choosing Dick as a name long after the double meaning came about.
*Real name of a former co-worker
From your cite, it looks like the reason “dick” became used as a slang term for penis may have been because “Dick” was such a common and typical man’s name—as in the phrase “every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”
Because my dad is 74, and doesn’t care what a bunch of dirty-minded whippersnappers think.
The penis thing is much more recent, with the first incidence in 1890. It’s only become more common than the name in recent decades.
Hear, hear, OP.
If I was a Richard, I’d choose the full name.
That was my band director’s name, my first two years of high school!
Hah, I’ve long suspected it was rhyming slang, and that “Rick” predated “Dick”.
My paternal grandmother’s name was Dick. Okay, her name was Lorena. But her father wanted sons, and ended up with three daughters, and somewhere along the line they all got tagged with boy’s names as a joke: Dick, Pete, and Johnny. And all three of them cheerfully answered to those names for the rest of their lives - they’re the names everybody knew them by (though the baby brother they finally got refused to answer to “Mary” 
). Grandma Dick once mentioned that it made it easy to tell when the guy on the phone was a salesman - she’d hang up as soon as he called her “Lorena”, because that immediately made it obvious that this was somebody who didn’t know her - everybody who knew her called her “Dick”.
This is funny because the nickname is dick.
I hate it when a dick is thrust on me.
What’s odd is that on Bewitched, one Dick was replaced by another.
Why use the name “Dick”? Because it sounds so butch, that’s why!
Hrm, so when a novella mentions that someone hired a ‘private dick’, the reader is thinking ‘gigolo’? :dubious:
You are a man named Richard in a room full of dicks. Funny compliment.
:p:p
My sweetie’s name is, indeed, Richard. Think I’ve heard exactly 1 person call him ‘Dick’ during the last 5 years, though it was meant honestly, not as an insult. I know he hates it. I’ve never heard anyone else call him anything but ‘Richard’, and that’s just too formal for me; as a result, for the first time in my life I’ve found myself using diminutives like sweetie and hon. Literally NEVER did that before, and now it’s about all I do.
I’ve never met one under 65. My dad is 60 and has gone by Rick his whole life. I know several older Richards, Riches, and Ricks, but not one Dick.
I know plenty of Dicks (yes, and plenty of dicks) of various ages, including one in his lower/mid twenties.
Indeed, I was named after my dad’s best friend from high school who, as an adult, went by “Dick”. My dad is coming up on 68, and yeah, I’ve never run into a Richard from my generation who goes by “Dick”.
You’ve got to be kidding.