The Confusing Names Peeve

Most people who are on a first-name basis with me wonder sooner or later why I am called by at least three different names. If I ever compile a personal FAQ, this is will be the number one item. I answered it dozens of times verbally, and once even posted it to USENET:

From hp Mon Jul 20 19:46:03 DST 1992
From: hp
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: names! names! names!
References: <122860034@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM> <1992Jul14.060841.10963@cs.yale.edu>
Organization: Technical University Vienna, Dept. for Realtime Systems, AUSTRIA

elliott-bruce@CS.YALE.EDU (Bruce Elliott) writes:

>There seem to be people out there that feel that everyone should have a
>one-syllable designation.  They immediately shorten my name to "Al".

They shorten Bruce to Al? Must be weird people over there. Or do they abbreviate Elliott to El?

>Alex Elliott

Ah, that's the solution! Peeve: People posting from other people's accounts. Or do you have the same problem as me?

The confusing names peeve:

When I was born my parents decided they liked the name `Peter' so much that it had to be the first name of their first-born son. Unfortunately, a lot of other parents had the same idea, and so we were four Peters in class. So when I was about 10, I decided to distinguish myself from the other three Peters by calling myself Johannes (which is my middle name). Of course Johannes mutated to Hansi in no time (The name shortening desease is just as common in Austria as in the States [together with a preference for weird nicknames. A crate of Starkenberg beer to anyone who can explain why my friend Kurt was called Jenny]), but I could live with that, and soon nobody but my parents called me Peter anymore. But then came the Army, where I was steadily reminded that my Name was `Wehrmann Peter Holzer', and by the time I started to study, I was confused enough to introduce myself alternately as `Peter' and `Hansi'. When people started calling me Hans-Peter I had take drastic measures (double names are quite common in Germany and therefore detested in Austria), and started to support the fraction who claimed that my name now and forever was to be HP (pronounced Hah-Pay, although occasionally it is Anglified to Aitch-Pee). So now there are people who call me Peter, people who call me Hansi, people who call me HP, and others who use combinations or modifications of these forms. Gets pretty confusing sometimes.

AntiPeeve: I can usually find out who was trying to phone me by asking if the caller wanted to speak to Peter, Hansi or HP :-)

EigenPeeve: People who follow up to a message 6 days old.

2010-09-02T20:45:04