(It does kind of liberate me a bit, because I can pick whatever difficult name appeals to me, but tell people, "you can call me [easyname]". It does mean I have to like both though, so yeah, two problems.)
I am reminded of my cousin Lia, whom I only ever heard called Lia until I went to Cyprus and misspelled her name "Lea" and was corrected with the explanation, "It's short for Evangelia." It wasn't a surprise to anyone else though, as when I saw her house there was a sign on the fence with her full name on it, advertising that she's an architect. (This is my cousin the Timelord. I visited three of the four houses she designed (she usually does parks), and each one was bigger on the inside, two of them quite dramatically so. I figured out some of the tricks she'd used -- leading to a "You spotted that?! Only other architects ever catch that!" moment -- but I couldn't account for most of it. She was amused when I announced that I'd figured out her secret, that she's a Timelord.)
Come to think of it, I also never heard aunt Vaso's whole name -- Vasiliki -- until I started working on the family tree, but apparently that is a pretty standard shortening. But I don't think either relative's short name was chosen to be easier for Anglophones (though Vaso lives in England, so maybe she would have done so if she weren't already called by an easy short version of her name).
The idea of a Greek name and an even Greeker name delights me.
(no subject)
(It does kind of liberate me a bit, because I can pick whatever difficult name appeals to me, but tell people, "you can call me [easyname]". It does mean I have to like both though, so yeah, two problems.)
I am reminded of my cousin Lia, whom I only ever heard called Lia until I went to Cyprus and misspelled her name "Lea" and was corrected with the explanation, "It's short for Evangelia." It wasn't a surprise to anyone else though, as when I saw her house there was a sign on the fence with her full name on it, advertising that she's an architect. (This is my cousin the Timelord. I visited three of the four houses she designed (she usually does parks), and each one was bigger on the inside, two of them quite dramatically so. I figured out some of the tricks she'd used -- leading to a "You spotted that?! Only other architects ever catch that!" moment -- but I couldn't account for most of it. She was amused when I announced that I'd figured out her secret, that she's a Timelord.)
Come to think of it, I also never heard aunt Vaso's whole name -- Vasiliki -- until I started working on the family tree, but apparently that is a pretty standard shortening. But I don't think either relative's short name was chosen to be easier for Anglophones (though Vaso lives in England, so maybe she would have done so if she weren't already called by an easy short version of her name).
The idea of a Greek name and an even Greeker name delights me.