It's funny how people can be about names...

The version of a person's name you use can imply a lot about your relationship to that person and the situation at hand. For many of us hearing our full name (with middle name) spoken clearly meant we were in trouble as kids. We have nicknames we like and nicknames we hate, sometimes because of the name and sometimes because of the person. There are social rules regarding who you call by their last name, their first name, or a nickname.

I mostly realized this when about to fire off an email to someone. Noting that they had signed with the short version of their name I had a moment of debating how to respond. In the end I signed it with my full first name rather than the abbreviation that appears here.

I've always been a bit odd about my nickname. From friends, parents and lovers it feels natural and endearing. From strangers, or when I am introduced with it, I feel put upon and curiously exposed. I was going to use it as my name on my first CD and then changed my mind. It is a very clear line for me when someone goes from 'Avelyn' to 'Avy'. It works the other way too, it would sound bizarre to me for my best friend or my mother to call me 'Avelyn', I would assume they were mad at me or something.

Some people are similarly pointed about surnames, there are people who you simply do not call by their first names if you are not close friends or if you're younger than they are. This has it's uses, I mean in school most of my friends' moms were known to me as "so-and-so's mom" and it's much easier to remember a last name than actually remember a grownup you never really speak to except to ask if billy's at home. Surnames can also be an authority thing, like the tradition of teachers being known by their last name. This still holds, I call almost all of my university professors Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. whatever and the same is true in most high schools.

That's probably the root of it, really. The different levels of names denote status. Someone referred to by title and surname has higher status than the speaker or is an equal stranger, someone referred to by full first name is an equal and acquaintance, someone referred to by a nickname is...well that's a bit complicated. Nicknames tend to be diminuitive, putting "ie" sounds on the end of names or in some languages literally translating to "little" whatever the name is. More solid-sounding ones (like nick or bill or bob or whatever) are nonetheless less work to pronounce than a full name, signifying that the extra effort is not necessary.

It makes me wonder how much of growing comfortable with people is learning to take them for granted. Making the work of the relationship itself compensate for taking less care over niceties that must be observed with strangers. And if those niceties are really just around to keep us from killing each other, maybe that's why we don't need them so much when someone has decided they like us enough to refrain anyway.

How do you feel about your name? Are you protective of your nickname?