What's in a name?

[Duke]

None of us gets to pick our name at birth. Do you think your given first name suits you? Did you it use it, or (like me) go by your middle name or a nickname? If you could do so, would you change your name, and of so, to what?

 

[Duke]

My parents always referred to me by my middle name. When I went to school I wanted to use that name because it was much easier to spell/write than my first name. I've had a good number of nicknames over the years, most of them in high school and college.

I had a teacher in 8th grade who refused to refer to her students by any name other than their given first name. I wasn't the only one to be unhappy about this, a few parents (not mine) even went to the principal. She refused, so for one school year, at least in one class, I went by my first name on a day-to-day basis.

 

[Debi]

The name Deb in all it's forms was the most popular one the year I was born and for several years after. Someone would yell Deb and 6 of us in a room would turn around to answer.

My last name was a mouthful...hard to spell, hard to pronounce, and not one you find often anywhere. I could always tell if a teacher had one of my cousins in class before because they could pronounce it. (It's not pronounced like it's spelled, so that didn't help matters! lol)

Now, I have the simplest of first AND last names! Which, once again, is confusing to many because there are so many of us! My primary physician has 5 of us. And that's just one doc in the county. We have to go by birth dates and one has the same birthday but one year off from mine.

We can all thank Debbie Reynolds, movie star, for this overwhelming amount of Deb's.

 

[titch2k6]

A few short years after I was born, my mum and dad separated. I was told that this was due to my mother seeing another man, for quite some time, in an affair. His name was Malcolm. This, incidentally, is also my first name........

According to family folklore, I was named by my mother and I can't but help wonder if I was named after the man she was seeing for years before my father left her?

This is why everyone I know calls me Titch, as I do not like, nor typically respond, to my other name.

 

[garnetsilver]

My mother named me after some soap opera character, which annoyed the heck out of me. I have always liked the name Anne, which is the shortened version of my middle name, and for a year I went by that name. Now I still dislike my first name, but have picked a pen name that I love, so that makes up for it.

 

[GoneWestUtah]

I like my first name, was named after my dad. I do go by one of the several nicknames used for that name, however.
I was supposed to be a "Jr." but to keep a grandpa happy (I was his first grandchild), my middle name became Michael, the English version of one of his middle names which was Michel.

I am forever grateful that they didn't pick his other middle name, Aloysius.

 

[ozentity]

I hate my first name, probably because I was only called it when mum was mad at me, shortened when I was good, lol.

 

[Duke]

My best friend from college named their son after me, except flip flopped my first and middle name to align with me routinely using my middle name. And yes, you guessed it, he went by his middle name, the first name I never used.

 

[GoneWestUtah]

 

[GoneWestUtah]

See it through to the end.