My cousin is named Andrew and had always been called his full name, until he started 8th grade and decided he wanted to go by Andy. It was REALLY HARD for all of us to change what we’d called him for 13 years, but eventually we adjusted. He’s 21 now and still goes by Andy.

I was named Margaret after my Grandmother. For some reason my parents called me “Missy” . In 4th grade I changed schools and there was confusion as to what my name was. It was like, Oh yea, I am Margaret, just like Grandma. When I went to high school I told people to call me Maggie. I always answered to Missy, not giving family a hard time abotu the change.

Now my 16 year old, who we called “Bobby” and whom I expected to prefer “Bob” as he got older, still introduces himself as “Bobby”.

My 12 YO goes by AJ in his Religious Ed classes because there is another Alex there.

When my sister (Michelle) was little she introduced herself as Katie, unbeknown to us.  In middle school she had the nickname with her friends of Toby.  I still don’t understand where that came from.  She also has gone by Chelly.  I have always called her by her full name, but now with kids we do refer to her as Aunt Chelly, or Aunty.  My other sister and I don’t have good names for shortening so we have always used our full names.

When my dd was 7 my ds couldn’t say Zoe so he called her Ya-Ya, and she was officially Ya-Ya with family / friends until the age of 10 when she decided she hated the nickname and never wanted to be called that again.  My dd Katherine was nicknamed Kaku (pronounced kack-oo) by her little sister, and it stuck, but also only with family and friends, at school she is Katherine.  When I was pregnant with her, I was sure I wanted to call her Kate, but she isn’t a Kate, she is definitely a Katherine or Kaku!  And my dd Margaret is definitely Maggie - that’s what everyone calls her and she will go by that at school next year as well.  My ds Michael was nicknamed “Punky” when he was a baby because he head-butted EVERYTHING - but once he grew out of that stage, the name kind of faded away as well.

When my second son, Benedict, was born, my first son wasn’t yet 2 and couldn’t pronounce his name, so we started calling the baby “Baba,” and we still do at home (he’s 3 now). When my Spanish-speaking MIL came to visit for the first time, she looked really uncomfortable every time we called the baby “Baba,” and she finally confessed that, in Spanish, “baba” meant something close to “drooling idiot.” We call him Benedict around her now!

Only my family and very close friends call me “Less”. My mom called me “Less-Tess” when I was little and now simply “Tess”. My 3-year-old lately has taken to correcting her: “No Grandma, she’s not Tess, she’s Mommy!”

I have a Michael that I’d prefer not to shorten to Mike, though I suppose that’s inevitable. (Right now he is usually Mikey, but he’s only 2.) But on the other hand, the baby has been called Sam from the beginning because it just seems to fit him better than the full Samuel.

Our 5 yo Margaret is called Maggie and has been since her birth, intentionally. She is a high-spirited girl, and it fits her well. However, since learning to write she has become enamored of writing out her full name. Because she can, I think. As a result, some of her school friends call her Margaret and she doesn’t mind. It was cute when one of her school friends called for a playdate and asked if “Margaret” was there. We don’t call her that very often, so I did a double-take!

Also, I LOVE the nickname “Meg” for Margaret (Meg Murry! Meg March!), and keep trying to call her that on occasion. She had two Megs (short for Megan) in her preschool, so to her it’s a completely different name, and she gives me strange looks when I call her that. Maybe someday she’ll befriend the literary Margaret/Megs of my girlhood and not mind so much.

Our daughter’s name is Moira (“moy-ruh”), and somehow we’ve taken to calling her “Moi” (not like the French, but like “moy”)...and just in recent days I’ve been thinking about trying to NOT call her that, since I am discovering I think her full name is much prettier.  I’ll have to get my husband on board, since we each do it equally.  I know other people with the name Moira who go by Mimi or Mia…but those seem like entirely different names to me, unrelated to Moira.

I call my son a variety of nicknames, but he introduces himself by his full name, and that’s what pretty much everyone else calls him.

I’m not a fan of nicknames, either. My friend is named Miranda because her mother wanted a daughter named “Randi,” and I’ve always thought, “THEN WHY DID YOU JUST NAME HER RANDI?” Bugs me.  My younger son is just Alex, not Alexander. I’ve never known an Alexander who WENT by Alexander, so we just cut out the middle man, so to speak.

Anyhoo. My older son is named Hayden, and when he was a baby we called him “Baby Hay-Hay,” and 18 1/2 years later, our family and close friends still call him Hay-Hay. But only us. To the rest of the world, he’s Hayden.

My first DD we named Katherine, but always planned to call her Katie. it took u till about 2nd grade for her to even realize her name was Katherine. All the subsequent siblings have called her T-T, and she calls herself that when she is talking to the littlest brothers. My second, Thomas, was Tom Tom for a while with younger brothers, and now, at age 9 sometimes goes by Tom with teammates, but usually Thomas. 5year old Robert is ALWAYS Robert, he dislikes any other name. The little guy is Joseph, or JoJo. We always tried to pick names that had a variety of nicknames they could choose at different stages or ages. When I was in college, I had never been called by a nickname and I needed one to put on my Orientation Advisor badge, so I went with Dani. I didn’t like it at the time,  ut now my dearest friends from that time call me Dani and it is special to me.

Our oldest is named Veronica, and though we had thoughts of nicknames it just seemed like her full name fit so well. So we call her that, as well as “Tuffins”, which has nothing to do with Veronica, it just evolved during her toddler hood and stuck (she is 3). Now she is the one who has established nicknames for our other two, shortening Jacinta to Cinta and Ariadne to Ari. Which both work fine I think. For myself, my full name is Victoria and I use that for all official purposes, but have always gone by Tori. In second grade I didn’t let the teacher know that, and it drove me crazy that everyone in my class called me Victoria all year. I love the name, it just wasn’t what I was used to. So I made sure to specify that I am Tori from then on. There were a couple of times in college that professors started calling me “Vicky” assuming it was what I went by, but that just goes to show you can’t make assumptions! I always appreciated when people asked what I went by, since Tori wasn’t always very common.

With our first, Margaret, we knew we wanted to mainly call her Greta, so we put it on her birth announcement and we mostly call her Greta. She introduces herself as Greta, but knows her full name (she is 3.5). Our second and third children we haven’t had a preferred nickname, so we mostly introduce them as their full names, but the middle, Eloise, has the nickname Ellie. Greta couldn’t say Eloise for probably the first year of Eloise’s life, so she always called her Ellie. I would say we call her both Eloise and Ellie pretty equally, but we introduce her as Eloise. The youngest is too young to know just yet (3 weeks), but for now we call her by her full name mostly.

I was always Lucy growing up, since it can’t really be shortened too much. There are a handful of people who have called me Lu or LuLu at some point in my life, but I’ve never really been known as LuLu.

I’m fascinated by nicknames, too!

Growing up I was never called anything but “Ellen”, but when I was 24 my two roommates started calling me “Ellie” and “Elle”. I really liked it, but had no idea how to go about adopting either as a nickname with other people. It felt awkward to say, “Oh, I’m going by Ellie now!”. Plus, I think a big reason that I liked my roommates calling me by nicknames was how easy and organic it felt. So, I remain “Ellen” with everyone but my old roommates.

With my daughter Emeline, we had planned on calling her “Emmy”. After she was born I was surprised to find myself almost exclusively using her full name or, randomly, “Emsa”. (I don’t even know how that started—someone used “Ems” and then it morphed, maybe?) Over the past six months I’d say it’s turned into almost equal parts “Emeline”, “Emmy”, and “Em”; “Emsa” has fallen out of use entirely.

I intentionally use “Emeline” when I’m with people who don’t know us well because I want people to know how we pronounce her name. (A lot of people say -leen or -lyn for the the last syllable instead of -line.) I’m finding that most of our family and friends call her “Emmy”, and I’m super curious what she’ll prefer going by as she gets older.

Our children have all developed nicknames, though it tends to be just family (& a few close friends) who call them by those names.  We always introduce our children by their full first names.  Our eldest, Abraham, decided to go by “Abe” when he was about 14.  Abigail is referred to as “Abby” by most people, which she likes.  Isaac’s initial are IX, so I sometimes call him “9”, since his initials are for the Roman numeral 9.  Silas goes by “Si” (rhymes with sigh), Agnes goes by “Aggie”, & Uriah goes by “Uey” (rhymes with chewy, UE is also his initials).  The children each have individual (silly) family nicknames that only their parents & siblings use with them.

The lads use their full name @ school and their nicknames @ home. However, many of the kids @ school or friends from the neighborhood so their call them by their nicknames. But as a rule, all school work, teachers and such use their full names.

I’m really a Katherine, and officially I am that, but I have to remind myself to answer to that, since I’ve been Katie all my life.  My parents named me Katherine with the intention of calling me Katie and did so from day one.  People would always want to try to call me Kathy.  I have brothers named Daniel and Joseph, but they’ve always gone by Danny and Joey, and they still stick with those names in college.  I’ll be curious to see what they do when they’re out in the working world.  My oldest 2 have names that are stand-alone, but my son is James, so we’ll see if he ends up with a nick-name.  I know that we as parents can’t always control what nick-names our kids end up with.

I am not a fan of nicknames, especially the one that usually comes with my oldest son’s name.  My husband and I were so against that nickname we almost didn’t name him what we wanted to.  But we decided to go ahead with the name we wanted and if there was going to be a nickname we would be okay with “x” but definitely not “y”.  Well no one else really cares what you want your child to be called.  They will call him whatever they please and so they always call him that dreaded nickname.  He is too shy to correct people that that is not his name even though he does wish people would use his given name.

I think it’s really rude when you say your name is “x” or your child’s name is “x” and then without even asking if it’s okay, people will just start calling you “y.”

I, too, am not a big fan of nicknames. Oddly, though, my boys have them but my girls don’t. My oldest was named after my husband and was automatically given his childhood nickname. (Richard to Ricky) He’s 14 now and I prefer to just call him Rick. The “y” seems too babyish for me. Our other son was named after my dad and therefore took his nickname. He’s William but we call him Bill. NOT Bill"y”. And everyone that has attempted to call him Billy I have confronted and explained that it his not his name. I have no problem correcting anyone about my children’s names. I gave my daughters names that only had five letters in them. You would think that there would be no reason to shorten them. My MIL tried calling my Clara, “Cla.” I quickly let her know that her name was Clara. And I really thought that it was an easy name. I can’t believe the amount of people that mispronounce it. We pronounce it with a short “a” sound. So many people say it with a long “a” sound. As in Claire-a. I have corrected but I think some people are possibly tone deaf. I am also name sensitive since no one ever spelled my own name correctly when I was growing up. Actually they still don’t. They spell it with a “Ch” instead of a “K” and usually never pronounce the “a” at the end. My family always called me Kris growing up but all that changed when I started Catholic school in 4th grade. It was my full name. Nothing less. The nuns were quite clear about that. So my own nickname is rarely heard anymore. Mostly just by my one brother. So maybe that’s why I’m not a big fan of nicknames. Although I confess to calling my toddler son “Finster-baby” when he’s up to no good. Ya gotta love Bugs Bunny cartoons!

My boy is technically Charles, but has been called Charlie since the moment we decided that if our first baby was a boy he would be called Charlie.  We gave him Charles as a responsible sounding name for resumes and the like, but he has always been our Charlie.  My little Genevieve however still goes by her entire name most of the time.  My husband didn’t like Eve as a nickname (he still hasn’t gotten over the whole original sin thing…) and I didn’t like Genny because I thought everyone would assume she was a Jennifer.  Nothing wrong with Jennifer/Jenny, but that just wasn’t the name we chose.  These days, she has a bunch of nicknames that never stuck (Vivi, Vievers, Genny-Benny, etc) and goes by Genevieve.

When I was growing up I had a baby doll named Elizabeth and to tease me my brothers used to call her Lizard Breath.  My older brother has a daughter named Elizabeth and for the longest time called her Lizard Breath, until she went to the dentist and introduced herself my saying “My name is Liz but my Dad calls me Lizard.” Now its just a big joke but I know it was interesting at the time.

I am not a fan of nicknames.  I didn’t have a name that lent itself to a nickname, so I never had one.  My opinion is similar to Carolyn A’s husband above- why give a child a name that you don’t intend to use? 

That being said, if my daughter wants to be called something else when she grows up, I will go with it.  It always bugs me, though, when I introduce her to people, and almost always the second question after “What is her name?” is “What are you going to call her?”  Well…we’re going to call her Catherine, because that’s her name!  Duh. 

Nicknames are quite common in our family.  My husband, who was named Richard, was actually the third “Richard” on his street (I don’t know why my in-laws still named him Richard!).  One of them was a Richie, another Ricky, so my husband was called…wait for it….Dick.  Until high school, when he begged his family to stop.  the oldest brother still calls him Dick, but not in a rude way and the others have either taken to Rich or Richard.

I’m a Katie who didin’t know she was a Kathryn until Kindergarten.  My sister is Theresa or Theresa Mary to me and my children, but the rest of the world calls her Terry.

We named our oldest daughter after my German Grandmother - Elisabeth.  My Grandmother always went by the shortened “Elly”.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that because I like Elisabeth - but when we got home from the hospital with this tiny little baby, Elly just seemed to fit.  She’s been Elly her whole life.  For a while, she actually thought her name was Elly-Elisabeth.

My family called me “Kimmie” or “Kimmer” growing up (short for Kimberlie).  I went by Kim in school and through my early 20’s.  My sisters and my aunt are the only ones who still refer to me as either Kimmie or Kimmer and they’re really the only ones I would allow to ever call me Kimmie.  I always looked younger than my age and it was super annoying when I was in my early 20’s and still being mistaken for 14. (boy I wish I had that problem now at 47!) I decided that to give the impression of being more mature, I would only go by Kimberlie and just started introducing myself that way.  It helped that I had moved out-of-state and was making a whole new circle of friends and colleagues. The problem is that I have never, ever, liked the name Kimberlie.  My sisters got cool names - Alexis and Shana, which back in the 60’s and 70’s were pretty unusual.  I got the boring, top 5 girl name, tons of girls with my name. 

In high school I got the nickname Shug (as in hug not sugar).  My best friend from high school still calls me that and if I call her I say, “Hi Lin! It’s Shug…” because if I said “Hi Lin, it’s Kimberlie” she’d have no idea who was leaving her the message. 

Of my four kids, only one has a nickname that has stuck.  My husband started calling our daughter Meili (pronounced May-lee), “Sweet Pea,” shortly after we adopted her.  It’s just stuck.  Most of the time we call her Meili or Meili Rose in public, but at home it’s Sweet Pea.

My son is Anthony (age 4), and we don’t plan to shorten it, but wait to see what happens in grade school. 

My dad affectionately called my sister “Miche” (shortened from Michelle), and before he knew it every sports team, class and church group adopted the same name.  In our area, nick names seem to spread quickly.

I think certain people like to GIVE nicknames and others just don’t.  Ironically it is often the person who nicknames others that does not have a nickname but wishes that they did.  I have a sister and a daughter who like to give others nicknames and both wish that they had a nickname. 

For my own children we have used nicknames and often drop then when they are no longer appropriate or the person asks us to stop.  For example my son was ‘chubby’ as a baby until he was about 5.  Now he’s skinny.  But he misses that we don’t call him chubby.  But when we called him ‘celery’ (I guess because of Veggitales) he asked us to stop and we did.

In my experience, it seems that nick names really only “stick” if one’s family (and oneself) promote them.

My parents weren’t big on nick names (which I think should be differentiated from pet names, they absolutely used pet names on us). My parents named me the most popular girls’ name of the year that I was born. Unlike most of my peers, my parents never called me by the usual nickname. It was nice being the only Amanda I knew that didn’t go by Mandy (or another variation of the name, spelled differently), because nobody ever had to refer to me as “first name, last initial.”

On the other hand, my husband’s family is big on nick names. I have heard my mother-in-law referred to by at least two different nick names on a regular basis. My sister-in-law decided in middle school that she preferred her middle name to her first name, most people call her by that now; although, once she started working, she decided that it was easier to just go by her actual first name at work. My husband’s parents gave him his name with the intention of calling him by his initials (JR, my mother-in-law was a fan of Dallas) always. Now that my husband is an adult, that sort of nick name doesn’t work out very well professionally, so he uses his given name in those circumstances. My husband also has a college-aged brother, his family usually calls him by his nick name, but I’m not sure what he goes by among friends/professors/acquaintances at college.

As for my own children, there are a handful of pet names that we call our sons, but we use their given names most of the time (Gabriel and Joshua), both of which have very common nick names. For the most part, everyone else calls them by their names as well, though I have noticed that some people will immediately call Gabriel “Gabe,” and Joshua “Josh.” One day, they may decide that they want to go by those nick names, but unless they are very adamant about calling them by a nick name, I think that most family members that have known them for their whole lives will go on calling them by their given names.

Growing up I was “Joan Mary”.  They called me “Joan” in elementary and High School.  When I went to college my friends started calling me “Joanie”. My husband called me Bernie (My confirmation name is Bernadette) when we were dating.  I go by the first three now!  And…........I gave myself a new name in my new business.  It’s called “Joan Marie”.  I like it!!!  My brother’s tease me to no end about it LOL.  They were the ones who called me “Joanie, Baloney” growing up LOL!!!  P.S. NONE of my kids have nick names, except Jonathan, who goes by “Jon” and Joseph, who goes by “Joe, or Joey”. My other 3 children go by their given names including Catherine, who NEVER,EVER, and still never wants to be called “Cathy”.  She is too sophisticated for that!

My first name is Cecilia, but I have gone by my nickname SAM for 40 years. All 12 of my kids have had nicknames, some stuck. My sweet Elizabeth was the one I didn’t want: “Lizzie”. It is her and she loves it. It seems that the child above the baby gets to pick the nickname! Which of course makes for a good laugh! Enjoy, if they don’t like it, tell them when they get confirmed they can pick a Saint Name to change theirs to!

We gave our oldest two names that could be worked into a bunch a different nicknames: Charles and Elisabeth. Charles was initially called Zooey (rhymes with Huey, Dewey and Louie, NOT mispronounced like that actress who should thinks it’s Z-oh-ee), which is borrowed from Salinger (In the books, Zooey’s given name is Zachary, our son’s middle name). But he just kind of turned into a Charlie, and we love it.

Elisabeth was a small baby who had trouble gaining weight, so we started calling her Itsy Bitsy Betsy, and now we just call her Bets. At school, she’s Betsy. At home, she’s Buddy-Girl or just Buddy, which she named herself at the ripe old age of 2.

The youngest, oddly, has a name that can’t be turned into anything. She’s kind of jealous about that. I called her Scooter as a baby because she didn’t crawl - she sat up and scooted everywhere with a frog-kick. But nobody else called her that so it didn’t stick.

I am Mary Teresa (after my two grandmothers and the Blessed Mother) and have been called Teresa from birth. As a child, my dad started calling me “Tree” and that has been my nickname ever since. In college, I went by Tree and I think many of my classmates never knew my real name. Even now, my children (who are 8, 6, 4, 2, and 6 months) are astounded when I refer to myself as Mary (like at the doctor’s office). Most people call me Teresa. You have to be a really good friend to call me Tree!

As for my children, my oldest is named after his grandfathers (James Michael) but we knew we would call him Jamie from in utero. Although I love my name and I particularly love being a Teresa, it has been confusing my entire life that I go by my middle name. Even now, there are many cases where I just answer to Mary rather than correcting people (such as at the doctor’s office!). But being that James Michael is after his grandfathers, I didn’t just want to name my son Jamie because the full name is meaningful. He can choose when he’s older whether he wants to be a Jamie, James, or Jim (which is my dad’s nickname). With our other four children, though, we specifically named them something with no nickname (Clare, Simon, Violet, Eliza).

It’s funny that I love my name and nickname, but I didn’t want to set my kids down that same road because it was also super-confusing and sometimes annoying my whole life!

I never had a nickname growing up, but it was and is often mispronounced or misheard. Our son full name is William, but we call him Liam at home, and we are still trying pet names out on his little sister. We named her Thalia, but nobody seems to be able to pronounce it (Thay-leah). Her brother calls her Fay-yah, and her great grandmother calls her Ali because she never remembers how to pronounce her name.