By any other name

My beautiful niece is known as Boris!!! - christened Rebecca, shortened to Becker then into Boris !

My middle name was spelled incorrectly by my father when he registered my birth. It is constantly ‘corrected’ when I fill in forms, etc, and when I point it out I have even been asked ‘are you sure’? My reply is always ‘I’ve had that name for over 70 years so I think I know how to spell it by now’.

I've never known an Ireeeen. I've known one or two Ayerenes. I once worked with someone called D'reeeen though.

My MIL called her son, my DH, Douglas, because it cannot be shortened. He has never been called anything but Doug.

LOL. AS the youngsters say.

Surely the teacher can't have been serious in saying she was thinking of excluding a primary school child 'for a few days' for such a silly reason?? Would a class teacher have the authority?

We deliberately chose names for our children that we thought couldn't be shortened (Lucie and Simon) and that was fine when we lived in Surrey, but when we moved to the West Country where it seems all names are abbreviated (Michelle to Meesh, for example, or Elaine to E), they got called "Loose" and "Si" by their friends. Grrr! My daughter in particular was not happy with "Loose" and neither were we!!

My son’sfriends in teenage always called him Jol - which derived from his surname! Years later most of his friends still have no idea that his name is actually Martin!

At school and still, people miss the last A off my name. It changes my name completely and I find it very annoying. Even when they see it written down they get it wrong!

I remember a rather posh neighbour naming her daughter Gloria. All the local kids called her Glue!
My husband was always called Richie. He was really fed-up with a neighbour who insisted on calling him Rich-ard.

@Riverwalk - Irene isn’t ‘universally’ pronounced ‘Ireen’ - when I was a child in the 60’s my next door neighbour’s daughter was ‘Ireenee’, and if you watch the 1960’s TV series of the Forsyte Saga (and millions did), Irene Forsyte’s name is pronounced ‘Ireenee’, so that was probably the better-known pronunciation at that time.

I had a work colleague called Isaac Hunt phoenix!

my daughter is Toni and over 50 yrs ago it wasn't a common name. Some people used to call her 'Tone' but even as a small child she would say 'my name is Toni not Tone'. i was asked many times what it was short for, it wasn't short for anything. my boys are Paul and Martin and neither are shortened or lengthened.

Haha Rufus you did make me laugh. When I was a child there were two twin boys who lived just up the road from me. Their surname was Edwards.

Their parents named them Andrew Edward Edwards and Edward Andrew Edwards - imaginative, eh?

my sons name is edward he answers to Edward or Ed his pe teacher insisted on calling him Eddie and he never answered him at a parents evening he said eddies doing well but think he has a hearing ptoblem has he had his hearing checked . i said eddie who lol

An old one Rufus
Maw; How's that for name-shortening? , and how old would you be then, if you don't mind me asking?
I know you won't believe me, but Richard is a real live 80 year young lawn bowler colleague and I thought it was a comment relevant to this thread. Not joking! Mind you, we are always very circumspect by calling him "Richard"

We have someone coming to take a long course with us next year whose name is Michael Hunt, poor soul

My niece Jill and her colleague Gill (Gillian) were told by their manager that as it was confusing to have two people with the same name in the office, she’d like one of them to be known at work as Gillian. She really couldn’t understand why my niece said it couldn’t be her, and claimed never to have heard of the name Jill.

Some teachers are very stupid, it would seem.

My name is Linda. The only person in the world who could get away with calling me Lin more than once was my mother. Just for the record, the only person in the world who could get away with calling my pet was my much loved father-in-law – and he could do it any time he liked. I miss them both.

I can see the OP named her son Joe ...not joseph which is what the headmistress was calling him, and so he wouldn't respond until he heard his surname being called too and realised the teacher was trying to get his attention, but to the teacher because he wouldn't respond to Joseph ( which isn't his name).. he was being classed as insubordinate ...

I'm confused. Is the OP's son's given name Joe or Joseph? Is he Joseph and his family shorted it to Joe or is he just Joe? What was he is the school register and what was called as at registry? I ask as so many given names now are the shortened version or traditionally longer names. So many Charlies who are not Charles or Kate's or Katie's who are not Katherines, Lilys who are not Lilian and so on.

the reason i lasted 2 days in a catholic school .nun tried to make my name into something it wasn't.i refused to answer it wasn't my name.as a matter of fact it was the name my mother was avoiding when she named me.nun said it wasn't a "christian"name.was only going there to please rc grandmother.
got beat with a metal ruler.mom saw the welts and went ballistic.nun was removed and i went to local non religious school. thanks mom!

We called our youngest son Anthony, thinking that if it was shortened to Tony that would be OK. Everyone calls him Ant!

I had a friend with that problem. He was always having to explain that 'John' was his surname not his christian name.

My granddaughter was christened Jenny, and yet her godfather insists on calling her Jennifer, but only after being corrected when he called her Jessica.
When I started grammar school, the form teacher wanted details of our families, when I told her my stepfather was called Wilson Charles, she wrote down Charles Wilson. I corrected her, and suffered a long explanation as to why I had to give his Christian name first, and it took me ages to convince her that his Christian name was Wilson.