I’ve had the same name my whole life. I’ve thought about changing it, I’m sure most everyone has, at one point or another. And I’ve been called a lot of things over the years. Some good, others not so much. Other names, pet names that made me uncomfortable. I’m really not a pet name person, not a “Babe” or “Sweetheart” kind of girl. The only pet name I really tolerate is my dad calling me “Sunshine” and he’s been doing that since before I could speak anyway. I was a happy, cheerful baby, always up at sunrise to greet my parents with a grin. (I no longer feel this way about mornings.)
There have been some embarrassing screen names that we won’t talk about but I mostly hate the shortened versions of my name. Nicknames for Elizabeth are mostly mom-ish to me. Liz, Beth, the biggest culprit-Betsy. Ugh, no thanks. It’s just Elizabeth. I’ve even been called a lot of names that aren’t mine when people got my name wrong or forgot it or whatever. Bethany, Elaine, Elliot, Alyssa, Ella, Emily (this one is popular), Eleanor, Eliza; even the one professor who thought my first name was actually Blake. I’ve had to listen for the wrong name an embarrassing number of times when the person taking my order misheard me and I didn’t have the heart to correct them.
I’ve occasionally wished for a shorter name, especially when I was little and E-L-I-Z-A-B-E-T-H was a lot of letters. I’ve wished for a sweet name, the kind boys wrote songs about. All the girls with songs about them had names like Delilah and Miranda. Eliza is the obvious choice, it even rhymes. And it’s better than most of the other bastardizations of my name. It has a good number of syllables. Eliza was okay. But I kinda love one nickname, not Eliza. In fact, it’s not a name I’ve ever been called except for one friend whose little sister used it by accident.
I’ve never been brave enough to rebrand, even when I changed high schools or after, once I finished high school and came to VCU. I also never really had any close friends, or at least not close enough (or maybe just not the type) to give me a nickname I liked. My family of course insists on calling me by a name I dislike, as families tend to. They do it so much they’ve probably forgotten I hate it. Liz. One of the most annoying permutations of my name. But I guess its better than “Beth-Beth” which was the result of my little brothers’ inability to pronounce Elizabeth when they were younger. Speaking of siblings, I’m actually the only one in my family who would prefer to go by my full given name. Timothy is “Tim” Christopher is “Chris”, Christina is “Tina”. Christina is my older sister and I’ve called her “Tina” for as long as I can remember, although she goes by her full name professionally, which makes sense. Being a sibling, I have of course been called all of their names at some point (thanks, mom) and I’ve been mistaken for my sister many times. We sound very similar and we look obviously related so if someone is drunk/it’s dark/I’m sitting/whatever, it happens. There was even a guy in high school who dated me because he had a crush on her. That was fun.
You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve had to say, “no it’s just Elizabeth, please.” Not that anyone listens. My coworkers call me Liz now too. Maybe that’s why I never told anyone the nickname I liked. If they didn’t even respect me enough to call me by my given name when I asked, what would they do if I asked them to call me something else? Laugh? Not use the name I wanted, they already won’t do that. I’ve had shitty dudes try to ‘find’ a nickname for me. There’s still a frat guy from freshman orientation that insists on calling me “Eli.” And then there’s the guy that tried to make the pun “Beth you can’t guess what my name is. Get it? Bet/Beth? Hurhurhur.” He was a dick about it when I said I didn’t like nicknames.
The worst though wasn’t a guy. It was a girl in seventh grade that probably had self-image issues of her own and chose to pick on me. I was mousy, quiet, unassuming, bespectacled. Easy target. So, the delight that she was, she started calling me “Elizabitch” which was ironic because she was so clearly the bitchy one in that situation. And it just rolls off the tongue so nicely, of course, all her little minions started using it too. I hated middle school.
I think that if there had ever been a point in my life where I had a choice I might have used the power, really, to define my own identity. I might have had the agency to say,
“my friends call me Ellie.”
Copy Write Paste 