Tori M wrote:

and while an adult *can* legally choose to change their name
many don't want to offend their parents by doing so. or (in my
case anyway) the parents think the given name is perfectly
good & refuse to use the changed name. i just dropped my first
name, which i loathe, & use my middle name, which is nice,
short & androgynous since neither of my parents use *their*
first names, i claim to be standing on family tradition
lee

I find even when I want to use my Full first name most people want to
shorten it anyway and in a way I don't shorten it. My name is Victoria
which my mom shortened to Tori. If I introduce myself as Victoria
people ask me if I go by Vicki.. Not that I ever got the logic of that.
It is like when I was pregnant with Xavier and people asked me if I
would call him Bill or Will because his middle name is William.

When I named one of my dds Elizabeth, I knew I did not want her called
Liz or Lizzy (which I loathe), so from the beginning we called her
Beth, which I like. She has a cousin named Elizabeth who was called
by her middle name - cousin did not like her middle name and is now
called Liz or Lizzy.

I actually know a lady who named her child with a middle name that she
liked better than the first name so that (she said) when she was in
middle school and using purple or green ink and making little circles
to dot her 'i's and deciding to go by her middle name, she would be
called by the name her mother preferred from the beginning. I do not
know how this worked out. The child's first name was Tracy.

My mom saddled me with a double name (Rosalie Ann) which was kind of
difficult because it was so long that people wanted to shorten it. I
do not like Rosy, Rosanne, or Rosalyn (although that isn't so bad), so
I shortened it to Lee when I was in hs and college, and after I was
married I dropped the second name.