Really? They used to call him Hansel Solo at school!
November 5, 2013 8:45 AM Subscribe
How do you get people to call you by a nickname without having to draw it to their attention?
Or your middle name instead of your full name? I just think my middle name is cooler, but it seems inherently uncool to even bring this up with friends who have known me as dinosaurprincess for years. Is there a way of subtly doing this?
Or your middle name instead of your full name? I just think my middle name is cooler, but it seems inherently uncool to even bring this up with friends who have known me as dinosaurprincess for years. Is there a way of subtly doing this?
I have a number of friends who've changed their chosen names for various reasons, and almost all of the ones who've been successful in getting their friends to call them by a new name sent out an email to the effect of "Hey everyone, for [personal/professional/other] reasons I'm going to be changing my name from dinosaurprincess to trilobytechampion, so if you could please use this name going forward, that would mean a lot to me! Thanks in advance!"
The caveat with this is you only get one chance to do this. You may also want to consider changing your name legally. You can't ask people to call you one thing and then change your mind, people have no patience for it. So pick what name you want to use forever, then tell people it's your new name, and correct them when they get it wrong. It'll take a year or two before you don't have to deal with it anymore, but then you're done. Forever!
posted by Jairus at 8:54 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
The caveat with this is you only get one chance to do this. You may also want to consider changing your name legally. You can't ask people to call you one thing and then change your mind, people have no patience for it. So pick what name you want to use forever, then tell people it's your new name, and correct them when they get it wrong. It'll take a year or two before you don't have to deal with it anymore, but then you're done. Forever!
posted by Jairus at 8:54 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
I don't think it's possible to do it without calling attention to it. I've tried getting people to stop calling me by an unwanted short version of my name by signing my full name to emails and having my husband make sure to say my full name in front of them. They don't notice. I've had to outright tell them to use the longer version.
If you don't want to mention it yourself, you can use a friend or family member to discreetly say "Just to let you know, dinosaurprincess really prefers to go by dinosaurqueen" when you're not around. (The mother of a friend of mine once got her partner at the time to tell the neighborhood kids who were mispronouncing her name that she was changing her name to [correct pronunciation] for her birthday. It worked.)
posted by telophase at 8:54 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
If you don't want to mention it yourself, you can use a friend or family member to discreetly say "Just to let you know, dinosaurprincess really prefers to go by dinosaurqueen" when you're not around. (The mother of a friend of mine once got her partner at the time to tell the neighborhood kids who were mispronouncing her name that she was changing her name to [correct pronunciation] for her birthday. It worked.)
posted by telophase at 8:54 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
A middle name is different than a nickname. If you want to start going by your middlename, that's your right to self-identification and I would respect that. If you started insisting that I call you dragonballer because you think it sounds cooler, I might hesitate a bit.
posted by Think_Long at 8:55 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by Think_Long at 8:55 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
I've known two people who have done this.
Both basically did it when they changed friends groups - one when he went to university and the other when he came out. In those cases the new university and gay friends knew them by their "new" names respectively.
There was nothing particularly subtle about it though. I remember uni guy's home mates rocking up and calling him by his old name and confusing us all, who weren't aware he had changed name. It felt awkward. My other friend, well, I just have to remember to call him by his new name when I see him because it isn't that frequent and I knew him for a long time by his old name.
So, yes, what Etrigan says. Tell people what you want them to call you. Sign your name in emails etc by what you want. Introduce yourself as that. Correct people if they call you the wrong name, but do it politely if they knew your old one.
posted by MuffinMan at 8:56 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Both basically did it when they changed friends groups - one when he went to university and the other when he came out. In those cases the new university and gay friends knew them by their "new" names respectively.
There was nothing particularly subtle about it though. I remember uni guy's home mates rocking up and calling him by his old name and confusing us all, who weren't aware he had changed name. It felt awkward. My other friend, well, I just have to remember to call him by his new name when I see him because it isn't that frequent and I knew him for a long time by his old name.
So, yes, what Etrigan says. Tell people what you want them to call you. Sign your name in emails etc by what you want. Introduce yourself as that. Correct people if they call you the wrong name, but do it politely if they knew your old one.
posted by MuffinMan at 8:56 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
I have had a few friends try and do this as adults. Most have have given a very solid, easy-to-explain reason -- they were named after a relative that's treated them very poorly, for instance, or they're going through a major life change that necessitates a new name to go with their new or transformed identity. (Some of these people are transgender, and they have had the most across-the-board compliance with their wishes for pretty obvious reasons.)
If you want for old friends to call you by a different name, there is no subtle way to do this. You just have to tell them and hope they go along with it. If you don't have an explanation other than, "I like my middle name better," some of them are going to roll their eyes, and some of them may be jerks about it, and some of them will never stop calling you your old name. Some of them will just forget all the time and you'll have to decide how frequently you feel like reminding them. It's absolutely possible but it may be kind of discouraging, especially at first.
You can, of course, just start introducing yourself by your middle name when you meet new people, or when you're reconnecting with acquaintances at events. This version is obviously way easier.
How old you are and the nature of your friends group will also impact this either way -- a lot of people are figuring out their adult identities in college, but most people in their thirties have pretty much settled on what they're doing.
I'm saying all of this as an urban American -- it may be very differnt where you are, it's hard to say!
posted by Narrative Priorities at 8:59 AM on November 5, 2013
If you want for old friends to call you by a different name, there is no subtle way to do this. You just have to tell them and hope they go along with it. If you don't have an explanation other than, "I like my middle name better," some of them are going to roll their eyes, and some of them may be jerks about it, and some of them will never stop calling you your old name. Some of them will just forget all the time and you'll have to decide how frequently you feel like reminding them. It's absolutely possible but it may be kind of discouraging, especially at first.
You can, of course, just start introducing yourself by your middle name when you meet new people, or when you're reconnecting with acquaintances at events. This version is obviously way easier.
How old you are and the nature of your friends group will also impact this either way -- a lot of people are figuring out their adult identities in college, but most people in their thirties have pretty much settled on what they're doing.
I'm saying all of this as an urban American -- it may be very differnt where you are, it's hard to say!
posted by Narrative Priorities at 8:59 AM on November 5, 2013
A previous discussion here, for further thoughts.
posted by mykescipark at 9:15 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by mykescipark at 9:15 AM on November 5, 2013
One thing that has worked on me (i.e. I'm not the one trying to change how people refer to me; rather, I'm the one reacting to someone who is trying to change how people refer to them):
Change things like your email and your social networking accounts to use your preferred name.
Obviously this won't work in all cases - for example if you're going from "Bill" to "William", people might just assume you're being formal in your account name - but if you're going from "William" to "Bill", or "Bill" to "Will", it might help. It definitely got me to start referring to some of my friends in new ways, without them ever telling me to do so.
And since you're going to your middle name, it seems likely that they're not going to assume you're being formal. Also, I think that at least some social networking sites have ways to set up alternate names that people may have known you by, so you might be able to do something like "Mary Shrabadarbadz (Janine Mary Shrabadarbadz)" so that people who have known you as Janine know that your account represents you.
posted by Flunkie at 9:18 AM on November 5, 2013
Change things like your email and your social networking accounts to use your preferred name.
Obviously this won't work in all cases - for example if you're going from "Bill" to "William", people might just assume you're being formal in your account name - but if you're going from "William" to "Bill", or "Bill" to "Will", it might help. It definitely got me to start referring to some of my friends in new ways, without them ever telling me to do so.
And since you're going to your middle name, it seems likely that they're not going to assume you're being formal. Also, I think that at least some social networking sites have ways to set up alternate names that people may have known you by, so you might be able to do something like "Mary Shrabadarbadz (Janine Mary Shrabadarbadz)" so that people who have known you as Janine know that your account represents you.
posted by Flunkie at 9:18 AM on November 5, 2013
Subtly? No. You have to tell people clearly, and you have to remind them if they forget. You can do it kindly, politely, and casually, but there's no effective way to do it other than being completely up-front about it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:37 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:37 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Offer to change your contact info on their phone. That'll help drive it home too.
posted by Etrigan at 9:40 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by Etrigan at 9:40 AM on November 5, 2013
In spectacular fashion, you will lose any existing cool cred with such a move. What good is it then to have a truly cool sounding middle name but none of the awesome?
Names that render an air of legitimate coolness are bestowed upon you by other people. Not by yourself. Think George and the T bone fiasco.
posted by Kruger5 at 9:46 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Names that render an air of legitimate coolness are bestowed upon you by other people. Not by yourself. Think George and the T bone fiasco.
posted by Kruger5 at 9:46 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Use your own name when talking about yourself, in front of them.
Example: "So then I waked into the store and I realized, geez NewDinoPrincessName, I've had it wrong all along!"
Also, meet new people in front of them and introduce yourself with the new name.
Finally, giving an especially touching reason for the name change helps.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:46 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Example: "So then I waked into the store and I realized, geez NewDinoPrincessName, I've had it wrong all along!"
Also, meet new people in front of them and introduce yourself with the new name.
Finally, giving an especially touching reason for the name change helps.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:46 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
I think your approach is going to depend on the nature of the change.
If people are calling you Steffie but you prefer Stephanie, just do a simple verbal correction. "Actually, I prefer Stephanie."
If people are calling you Marge but you prefer Meg, same deal. "Meg is fine, thanks." My dad is a Rob who is sometimes incorrectly called Bob, and he corrects people all the time. No big deal.
Or, hey, maybe your official name is Stephanie Margaret Jones and you want to make sure strangers know you've always gone by Margaret. Similar casual correction: "I use Margaret, actually." It also might be helpful to not use your first name in most situations, or do something like S. Margaret Jones professionally.
Then you get to more complicated situations.
If you're planning on wholesale changing your name, that is a WAY different deal than getting people to call you Becky rather than Becca. And, yeah, aside from immediate family who would presumably know your middle name already, switching to a middle name midstream as an adult is changing your name. You are going to have to do some pretty intensive rolling out of the new name and getting people on board with it. Probably to mixed effect with people who've known you for decades.
A word of advice: if you are rolling out a complete name change, BE CONSISTENT. One of the cast members on a thing I'm directing sometimes goes by one name, sometimes goes by another, answers to both, and half the time she puts the old/wrong name on paperwork which can be really frustrating. I kind of never really know what to call her.
If you want people to tall you T-Bone rather than Stephanie, you're probably out of luck. Those types of nicknames can't really be chosen, as George Costanza showed the world.
posted by Sara C. at 11:27 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
If people are calling you Steffie but you prefer Stephanie, just do a simple verbal correction. "Actually, I prefer Stephanie."
If people are calling you Marge but you prefer Meg, same deal. "Meg is fine, thanks." My dad is a Rob who is sometimes incorrectly called Bob, and he corrects people all the time. No big deal.
Or, hey, maybe your official name is Stephanie Margaret Jones and you want to make sure strangers know you've always gone by Margaret. Similar casual correction: "I use Margaret, actually." It also might be helpful to not use your first name in most situations, or do something like S. Margaret Jones professionally.
Then you get to more complicated situations.
If you're planning on wholesale changing your name, that is a WAY different deal than getting people to call you Becky rather than Becca. And, yeah, aside from immediate family who would presumably know your middle name already, switching to a middle name midstream as an adult is changing your name. You are going to have to do some pretty intensive rolling out of the new name and getting people on board with it. Probably to mixed effect with people who've known you for decades.
A word of advice: if you are rolling out a complete name change, BE CONSISTENT. One of the cast members on a thing I'm directing sometimes goes by one name, sometimes goes by another, answers to both, and half the time she puts the old/wrong name on paperwork which can be really frustrating. I kind of never really know what to call her.
If you want people to tall you T-Bone rather than Stephanie, you're probably out of luck. Those types of nicknames can't really be chosen, as George Costanza showed the world.
posted by Sara C. at 11:27 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
I have had friends who have done this.
Just tell them what you want to be called. That's all you gotta do.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 11:54 AM on November 5, 2013
Just tell them what you want to be called. That's all you gotta do.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 11:54 AM on November 5, 2013
I don't think there's a way to subtly do this. If you want people who have known you for years to start calling you by a different name, you need to commit to asking them to call you by your new name, and then correcting them when they call you your old name.
If you love your middle name, why not just start using both your first and middle names? At the very least, it might make for less confusing name transition if you decide to eventually go by your middle name only, since people will already associate your middle name with you.
I have a very common first and last name, so I use all three names in a lot of settings, and in my email address. Everyone knows my middle name now!
posted by inertia at 12:32 PM on November 5, 2013
If you love your middle name, why not just start using both your first and middle names? At the very least, it might make for less confusing name transition if you decide to eventually go by your middle name only, since people will already associate your middle name with you.
I have a very common first and last name, so I use all three names in a lot of settings, and in my email address. Everyone knows my middle name now!
posted by inertia at 12:32 PM on November 5, 2013
The people I know who've had the most success at changing their name switched over to the new name when they entered a new setting-- new job, starting college etc. They either just introduced themselves by their new name or said "Hey, I'm X but I prefer to go by Y". Even the person whose nickname was both... unusual and completely unrelated to their given name got little more than a raised eyebrow.
The people who had the hardest time were unfortunately in the same situation as you: people who wanted to change how an established group of friends referred to them without a "valid" reason other than "it sounds cool" (not saying that you need a valid reason but people take it way less seriously than if you were doing so for professional reasons or coming out as transgendered or something), and without anyone who has only known your new name to help reinforce the idea. These people faced an uphill battle in that a lot of people did not take them 100% seriously at first and they had to constantly remind people who continued to refer to them by their old name by accident. It took them much, much longer to have people consistently refer to them by their preferred name.
So no, I don't think there's a subtle way to do this unless you're planning on making all new friends. I do think that most people will be more than willing to make the effort to refer to you by your new name, even if there's a little snarkiness or eyerolling behind your back at first. But they're not going to make the effort unless you also make the effort to remind and correct people that you go by Middlename now, not Firstname; otherwise they're just going to forget and revert back to the name they've always known you by.
posted by fox problems at 1:47 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
The people who had the hardest time were unfortunately in the same situation as you: people who wanted to change how an established group of friends referred to them without a "valid" reason other than "it sounds cool" (not saying that you need a valid reason but people take it way less seriously than if you were doing so for professional reasons or coming out as transgendered or something), and without anyone who has only known your new name to help reinforce the idea. These people faced an uphill battle in that a lot of people did not take them 100% seriously at first and they had to constantly remind people who continued to refer to them by their old name by accident. It took them much, much longer to have people consistently refer to them by their preferred name.
So no, I don't think there's a subtle way to do this unless you're planning on making all new friends. I do think that most people will be more than willing to make the effort to refer to you by your new name, even if there's a little snarkiness or eyerolling behind your back at first. But they're not going to make the effort unless you also make the effort to remind and correct people that you go by Middlename now, not Firstname; otherwise they're just going to forget and revert back to the name they've always known you by.
posted by fox problems at 1:47 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Or your middle name instead of your full name?
It sounds like right now you are going by firstname-middlename. Tell people you're changing to middlename because it's shorter.
When you meet new people, don't make the mistake of explaining that your name is dinosaur princess but you go by princess. Just say you are princess.
Since your new name is a shorter and easier to say version of your current name, people will probably pick it up fairly quickly.
posted by yohko at 11:07 PM on November 5, 2013
It sounds like right now you are going by firstname-middlename. Tell people you're changing to middlename because it's shorter.
When you meet new people, don't make the mistake of explaining that your name is dinosaur princess but you go by princess. Just say you are princess.
Since your new name is a shorter and easier to say version of your current name, people will probably pick it up fairly quickly.
posted by yohko at 11:07 PM on November 5, 2013
I did this. I wasn't subtle about it, but I also didn't send out an e-mail blast trumpeting it about or anything. It was just "Hi, I'm [newname]" to people I didn't know and "Oh, I'm actually going by [newname] now" to people I did. It probably helped that I was going through a period in my life when I was meeting lots of new people.
It is possibly notable that telling my mother was for practical purposes equivalent to telling everyone in my extended family, but that likely does not hold true for everyone.
posted by kyrademon at 2:18 AM on November 6, 2013
It is possibly notable that telling my mother was for practical purposes equivalent to telling everyone in my extended family, but that likely does not hold true for everyone.
posted by kyrademon at 2:18 AM on November 6, 2013
I'm late to this party, but maybe 5 years ago I changed my name on all social media and written exchanges from (ie) Jaycee to Jay-Z.
there is no one left in my life who writes or pronounces it without the z, except in more formal settings (the office, where I do not use the Z, obviously) and people who have no social media presence. and even some of them have switched over because they are just used to hearing it from other people. sometimes my mom says my full name too I guess.
this wasn't on purpose for me, but it really has effectively given me a nickname I chose myself.
but it really wasn't fast, so if you're hoping for a quick switch you'll have to tell people.
posted by euphoria066 at 4:29 PM on November 6, 2013
there is no one left in my life who writes or pronounces it without the z, except in more formal settings (the office, where I do not use the Z, obviously) and people who have no social media presence. and even some of them have switched over because they are just used to hearing it from other people. sometimes my mom says my full name too I guess.
this wasn't on purpose for me, but it really has effectively given me a nickname I chose myself.
but it really wasn't fast, so if you're hoping for a quick switch you'll have to tell people.
posted by euphoria066 at 4:29 PM on November 6, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Etrigan at 8:52 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]