My full name might not be Madi, but even before I was old enough to talk, people rarely called me by my full name. Through the years, I've received many different responses from people when they discovered that my full name was not Madi – some insisting that my name was Madelyn and not Madison, even though, it is, in fact, Madison. Either way, I love my given name, but I feel my nickname suits me better. Here are a few things I've experienced by only going by my nickname, and I've heard other people have, too.
1. When people hear your full name for the first time, they're not too sure who's being called out.
Whether it was in class or at your graduation ceremony, there were always people listening who were straight up lost when your name was called. When you confessed that it was your name, people were always like, "No!" Um, I think I know my name, dude. Thanks, though.
2. There are people you dislike solely for the reason that they will only refer to you by your full name.
No matter how many times you correct them, they insist on calling you by your legal name, which honestly makes you want to smack them. Like, you wouldn't want me calling you something when you gave me something else to call you? Where's the respect? I never said we had to be best friends, but come on.
3. There are so many variations from teachers on the spelling of your nickname that you start to give up on correcting them.
When you write your name on multiple papers spelled the same way, you hope they'll pick up on it, but they never do. It's a long year of paper mistakes. It almost leads you to just go by your full name to make things easier, which brings me to my final point.
4. You think about going by your full name sometimes just to make things easier.
When you don't pick up on someone calling out your name because they say your full name instead of your nickname and you've just waited a few hours in line, you become super annoyed. Mentally, your name is your nickname, but according to legal documents, you're your full name. If you haven't thought about just going by your full name, you've thought about legally changing your name to your nickname.
Regardless of if you like your given name or not, the nickname has given you the opportunity to branch out and create your own personality. It doesn't matter where we were born or what we come from, we can change all of that, even with something as simple as our names. Whether we like it or not, our names say a lot about us, and if you have the ability to modify it and feel you should, you should not feel ashamed to do so.
