Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.
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Ter[ence|ry]

· 28 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~794 times

My name is confusing. I don't mean that people constantly misspell it, but that no-one seems to know what I'm called. Let me explain.

British parents have this weird habit of giving their children long formal names which are routinely shortened to a diminutive version. Alfred becomes Alf, Barbara becomes Babs, Christopher becomes Chris - all the way down to the Ts where Terence becomes Terry.

And so, for most of my childhood, I was Terry0 to all who knew me.

There was a brief dalliance in my teenage years where I went by Tezza. A name I have no regrets about using but, sadly, appear to have grown out of.

So I was Terry until I entered the workforce. An overzealous IT admin ignored my "preferred name" on a new-joiners' form and, in a fit of bureaucratic inflexibility, renamed me "Terence". To my surprise, I liked it. It was my nom de guerre.

"Terence" had KPIs and EOY targets. "Terry" got to play games and drink beer.

While "Terence" sat in meetings, nodded sagely, and tried to make wise interjections - "Terry" pissed about, danced like an idiot, and said silly things on stage.

Over the years, as was inevitable, my two personalities merged. I said sillier things at work and tried a quarterly review of our OKRs with my wife1.

I was Terry to friends and Terence to work colleagues. Like a fool, I crossed the streams and became friends with my colleagues. So some knew me as Terry and some as Terence. Confusion reigned.

Last year, I stopped working. I wondered what that would do to my identity. Who am I when I can't answer the question "What do you do for a living?"? But, so it seems, my identity is more fragile than I realised. When people ask my name, I don't really know how to respond.

WHO AM I?

Personal Brand is (sadly) a Whole Thing™. Although I'm not planning an imminent return to the workforce, I want to keep things consistent online2. That's all staying as "Terence" or @edent.

So I've slowly been re-introducing myself as Terry in social spaces. Some people take to it, some find it disturbingly over-familiar, some people still call me Trevor.

Hi! I'm Terry. Who are you?

  1. Except, of course, when I'd been naughty and my parents summoned me by using my full formal name including middle names. ↩︎

  2. I was put on a Performance Improvement Plan. Which was fair. ↩︎

  3. I completely sympathise with people who get married and don't want to take their spouse's name lest it sever all association with their hard-won professional achievements. ↩︎

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28 thoughts on “Ter[ence|ry]”

    1. The Terence/Terry thing is funny, but my employer recently updated to a new HR system which ignored "preferred" names and outed a whole bunch of trans people...

      Reply

  9. I have a colleague called Perry. The Terry/Terence thing implies the existence of Perence. This would be an excellent name.

    Reply

  10. Same. I'm 'Doug' to pretty much everyone and I explicitly tell people not to call me 'Dougie' which I hate. But my passport, driving license, and NHS app all say 'Douglas'.

    FWIW I think you should consider revert to 'Tezza'. After all, why retire early if you can't reclaim some of your youth?

    Reply

  12. I can't shorten Ian any further ( although some people often manage to stick an extra 'I' in there - so sometimes I'll introduce my self as 'Ian with one eye').

    And, with no middle name, I often wondered if my dad thought that birth registrations were priced by the letter!

    Reply | Reply to original comment on bsky.app

  14. @Edent I've been lucky, in that "Hugo" isn't really abbreviable. On the other hand, I had to grow up being "Hugo", which wasn't ideal.

    Could have been worse. I was nearly Bartholomew, which would have been *terrible* growing up alongside the start of the Simpsons.

    And the story behind my brother's middle name (Cecil) is... convoluted, but awesomely weird.

    Reply | Reply to original comment on mstdn.social

  16. I went by Daniel, which was my given name at birth, for my entire childhood, but when I left home to go to university they already had a Daniel on the same floor of the halls of residence as me, so I became Dan.

    And it just kinda... stuck.

    So by the time I wrote out a deed poll to change my surname, 18 years ago this week, I figured I'd shorten my first name, too, to what everybody was calling me anyway. And that's how I ended up with what's probably one of the shortest names you've ever come across. It makes filling forms nice and fast... except when I have to work around well-meaning-but-flawed minimum length validations, sigh.

    Now, the only person who still calls me by my birth name is my mother. I don't mind. And frankly: she gave birth to me, so she can call me whatever she likes.

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  19. @Edent Teenage nicknames aside, I've only ever gone by Ben.

    Like you, I used to get fullnamed by parents when I'd misbehaved. They don't get to do that now, as it's become a spousal privilege (or maybe burden?).

    I'm always surprised how many people I know, though, who's "name" is actually their middle name because they don't like their first (I'm the other way, I don't like my middle name - really silly reason, but the dislike settled in at an impressionable age).

    Reply | Reply to original comment on mastodon.bentasker.co.uk

  22. My name is already a nick name. OluwaKemi has become Four letters. Kemi. Some people seem to think I want anther nickname. Kemster. Literally not my name in any way. I find it belittling and annoying esp as in a workplace. It’s not just the British names that people refuse to stick to.

    Reply | Reply to original comment on bsky.app

  23. @Edent Two stories about this.

    1: apparently my parents selected the name Giles cause it can’t be shortened. When my granddad (Bob) first met me, he reportedly said “hello Gi!”. I think of this often. I have also occasionally considered “Les” as a nickname, but not seriously.

    2: aforementioned granddad was christened William and remained so until he started school, where there was another in the class. Teacher renamed him Bob and he was known by that name for the rest of his life.

    Reply | Reply to original comment on mastodon.me.uk

  25. I'm Jan, and my name was deliberately chosen as it can't be abbreviated. Clearly Dan Q has the shortest (and coolest) name, but Jan Ives is pretty short 😎

    Reply

  26. My late mother always used her middle name.. I don't think I ever asked her why, or even realised she had a different name until I was reasonably old.

    I'm Robert formally, but use Rob in casual conversation. Don't even try using Bob. At best, I'll ignore you..

    Daughter has a different issue. Only has a first name and surname, but manages four capital letters and two punctuation symbols. It's seldom people get it right, even though no individual parts are at all unusual.

    Reply

  27. Slightly tangent comment but ... With respect to people changing their names when they get married. I am a male. I live in Belgium. In Belgium when a women gets married, she does NOT officially change her last name. It stays the same on all documents/identity card/passport etc. Many women choose to change the name used to address them on a personal/social basis, but officially their last name does not change. I think, not sure, that thier identity may, or they can reuest, be ammended with a note: "Married to Mr. John Doe." If I were female and got married I certainly would not want to change my name.

    Reply

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