My full name is Christina — a beautiful name but relatively long (3 syllables! 9 letters!), so since I was a baby, my parents called me Tina. This was the name I was known as by all until I moved to a new town in the 3rd grade. I explained to my new teacher and class that they could call me Tina, and immediately the boys started calling me Tina Turner and taunting me on the playground. Being the naturally shy child that I was, I was completely humiliated and intimidated at the fact that I was already being made fun of on my first day at a new school. I immediately asked everyone to call me Christina instead, and that’s what I was known as until I graduated high school in that same town.

I had one problem though: my family and all of my friends from church (who I had grown up with throughout our childhood and am still close with to this day) all referred to me as Tina. These people who were closest to me never referred to me by my full name, and my school friends didn’t even know I went by a nickname at all. This made things really confusing when my two worlds collided at birthday parties. Also, whenever I got things personalized or monogrammed, I had a tough choice to make: Christina or Tina? C or T?

When I entered college, I was faced with the choice of continuing to go by my full name or just switching to my nickname. Since my family and closest friends called me Tina, I felt it was a little closer to my true identity. Plus, since I was regularly referred to by my nickname, my full name just sounded stuffy and formal to me. So I decided to go by my nickname and stick to that through college and onto my professional life.

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This went along fine until people started to discover that Tina wasn’t my full name. They’d catch a glimpse of my license or student ID and say “your name is Christina??” I even came across some people who actually got a little upset that I had never told them my full name. That’s not something that really comes up in regular conversation– “Let’s meet at the dining hall. By the way, Tina isn’t my real name, my full name is actually Christina. Just in case you wanted to know.” Since my nickname happens to be the last part of my name instead of a simple shortening of the first part (like Jenny/Jennifer, Matt/Matthew, Jess/Jessica, Dave/David), it’s not automatically assumed that Tina is short for something.

(I should also mention that I actually don’t really like the name Tina. I have lost count of how many characters in books, TV shows, and movies with my name that are mistresses, strippers, cheerleaders, and generally ditzy! You might not think so, but now that I’ve told you this, you will start realizing this about my name as well. And every time a floozy character with my name is introduced, you can join me in saying “it’s ALWAYS Tina.”)

I’ve asked my parents why they gave me one name if they intended on calling me by another, thus giving me this minor identity crisis. Their simple explanation was “Christina is a beautiful name!”, which is true, so I can’t blame them. I swore up and down that I would give my kids a name that was solidly their identity all on their own and not commonly shortened, like Amy or Paul. (For the record, I have close friends with those names and I call them by nicknames. Hah.)

Fast forward to present day, and here I am with two children who primarily go by nicknames. Go figure. Both of their full names are formal and are commonly shortened to one of a whole slew of nicknames: Robert (Rob, Robby, Bob, Bobby, Bert) and Josephine (Jo, Jojo, Josie, Phini). But the nicknames Wagon Sr. and I chose to call them aren’t even among those common nicknames: RJ (for Robert Jr.) and Jodie. I’m extremely happy with the two names we ended up with, because I always thought it would be cool to have a son named after his father whom we could call Junior, and my favorite girl name has always been Jodie.

At least my kids won’t have a problem with their initials and monograms though!

(because I hate to post an entry without a single picture, here’s a montage of me and my two kids as babies.
Tina, RJ, and Jodie!)

Do you or your LOs go by a nickname?