Full Name vs Nickname

[Anonymous]

If your nickname is a shortened version of of your name (e.g., Liz for Elizabeth or Rob for Robert), do you use your nickname professionally? In emails? In verbal conversation? I have always used my nickname to sign emails, in conversation, and in my LinkedIn profile. However, I use my full name for publication, contracts, and in my email signature block. How do others handle this issue without confusion?

[Anonymous]

No, I only go by my nickname in my personal life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, I only go by my nickname in my personal life.

+1. Yep. No one knows I’m Chris at work. They only know me as Christine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your nickname is a shortened version of of your name (e.g., Liz for Elizabeth or Rob for Robert), do you use your nickname professionally? In emails? In verbal conversation? I have always used my nickname to sign emails, in conversation, and in my LinkedIn profile. However, I use my full name for publication, contracts, and in my email signature block. How do others handle this issue without confusion?

Very common approach.

[Anonymous]

I have a shortened nick name. I only use it within my work group for both emails and verbal conversation. If I'm meeting with another department, outside my agency or for a publication, I use my full name. My formal signature block also includes my full name and is on all written stuff but if it's an informal email to my boss or the people is supervise, I'll just sign as Nikki.

[Anonymous]

I knew both an Annie and a Lizzie (spelled like that) whose full names were those, I think you never know anymore and there is a greater diversity of names now so the older (and certainly narrowly culturally influenced) idea that you must have a proper/professional/whatever full name and then able to use nickname is less of a "rule" now, broadly speaking

[Anonymous]

It’s a nightmare especially because my nickname is not common for the name. Every new job I think I’m going to start going by full name but end up using the nickname anyway. Idk why I do that, what a headache to explain, goes in a masochist and wilding the awkwardness.

[Anonymous]

This seems really weird? Is it only women?

I've never heard of using a different name at work v. home -- unless it's a different name in the sense that some groups just call you one thing and some another, or you have a name like... Fifi or Cookie or something at home.

[Anonymous]

It is much, much worse for people with foreign names. Somehow Americans can, maybe after several tries, recognize that Elizabeth and Beth are the same person. But they have soooo much trouble making a similar connection between [long and complicated Nigerian or Thai name] that decided to go by "Ollie".

[Anonymous]

my nickname is not the common nickname for my full name and it causes lots of confusion. But I have only ever gone by my nickname so it is what i continue to use.

I did choose to give my children names that did not have nicknames because of this.

[Anonymous]

Peg and Peggy is Margaret and a lot of foreign born people don’t get it.

I find it amusing when people use completely fake names at work.

At one point I had three women working for me who used American nickname and maiden last name at work.

Meanwhile legally they took they’re husbands last name and had a real first name. And I had one that did opposite kept maiden name but used husbands last name.

One was a raging lunatic we had to fire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This seems really weird? Is it only women?

I've never heard of using a different name at work v. home -- unless it's a different name in the sense that some groups just call you one thing and some another, or you have a name like... Fifi or Cookie or something at home.

My family calls me by my middle name because the family member after whom I was named has been our first name longer than I have. My middle is far better than a cutesy nickname version of my first like some others in my family (like my 45-year-old cousin Davy or Little Adam). I got tired of trying to correct people back to the middle name around 6th grade (because a place in the form for your preferred name were not a thing in the 80s/90s), so most people call me by my first name while everyone at home calls me by my middle. It feels weird if my mom calls me by my first name - I just assume she's talking about the relative I was named after. I bet it'd be just as weird if someone at work called me by my middle.

[Anonymous]

My mom always joked when I was growing up that if someone used her full name, they were a telemarketer. It’s gotten more difficult every year with a nickname. So much stuff uses your “real name” now. Credit cards used to allow nicknames, but now no more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Peg and Peggy is Margaret and a lot of foreign born people don’t get it.

I find it amusing when people use completely fake names at work.

At one point I had three women working for me who used American nickname and maiden last name at work.

Meanwhile legally they took they’re husbands last name and had a real first name. And I had one that did opposite kept maiden name but used husbands last name.

One was a raging lunatic we had to fire.

A nickname that the person wants to be called is a "real" name. It's completely obnoxious to insist on calling a woman Jillian when she signs emails and introduces herself as Jill. It's not your right, even if they're "working for you" to insist on calling them a name just because you saw it on some legal documentation. They didn't have a choice over what their parents called them, and it's a pain in the butt to legally change your name as an adult.

[Anonymous]

My DH has a common name that most everyone uses a common nickname. He has full name in signature of all emails, all contracts, everything. But signs as nickname about the signature line.

Sam

Samuel Q. Public
Title

He only signs Samuel on legal documents.