To refuse to call him by his stupid nickname??

[PonyPals]

So we have a brand new staff member in my team who has a perfectly sensible name - Steven but has decided to use some ridiculously stupid nickname he made up - Sonty
And he is now constantly correcting all of us and insisting we use his nickname. I am his manager. I feel silly even uttering Sonty. Yet he corrects me every time I say Steven.
Aibi to want to take Sonty and shove it up his bum!
PS not his real name or moronic nickname but they are similar to what I said.

Darren is a terrible name though. I know one who morphed in to Daragh and we all allowed, no, welcomed, the pretension.

Dazza/Gazza/Bazza stops in the playground doesnt it?

Have to agree. We are not colonials . . . .

(It does sound daft, though - he should keep it for Blokes on the Piss Nights.)

I have an co-worker whose birth certificate (which I have seen because of DBS check paperwork) says Margaret but insists on calling herself "PEG"

So I call her clothes-Peg or Maggie or Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher

To her face?

Darren is a terrible name, it's true.

It's up there with Clinton, Lee, Jason and Wayne in all its 70's glorious working class awfulness.

And Gary. Mustn't forget Gary.

As someone who is married to a professor and head of department (and an academic myself) I have to raise an eyebrow at the idea of academics as a tweedy lot of people smoking pipes, having lunch with port, and raising a horrified eyebrow at 'Dazza'. Someone I know wrote an acknowledgements page to a book where all their blokey academic mates were mentioned by nickname (most of which were an imaginative combination of their surname and -ey). From trips to universities in the US, I get the impression the ivy league are less stuffy than Oxbridge/UCL, and the rest considerable less so.

Dazza wouldn't be a nickname I'd choose for myself, but on the other hand, basic politeness says you call people what they ask you to call them. You don't know why they've departed from their birth name - there are all sorts of very good reasons why someone might not want to use that, from simple dislike to things that are really traumatic.

"Peggy" used to be a popular abbreviation of Margaret.

Not heard so much now though, "Maggie" ( which I bloody HATE) being more popular.

Peg is a recognised shortening of Margaret though.

Dazza is overly colloquial. It's unprofessional. Another example - Katherine asking to be called Kate. That's fine. Katey Watey would not be fine.

britbat that's very mature of you I'm sure she's thrilled. Fwiw, Peg/Peggy are long standing, accepted shortenings of Margaret.

I might start calling her Ponty instead

I have an co-worker whose birth certificate (which I have seen because of DBS check paperwork) says Margaret but insists on calling herself "PEG"

Peg is a traditional diminutive form of Margaret.

Looking at this form the other side. My employers refuse to call me by my preferred name, only my legal name. It it demoralising and feel like I have lost all of my identity. 6 years and they can not call me by my name! Both are proper names but one is mine, part of my identity and I have been known by it since two weeks old. The other is a name on a piece of paper, it is not my name.

"If its public facing you need to sit down with him and tell him, as his manager, you won't be introducing him to clients as Dazza"

^^THIS.

Plus, nicknames - aren't they bestowed on you affectionately by someone else? You don't get to choose you own nickname! Diminutives yes (e.g. if you're Elizabeth it's up to you whether you're Betty or Liz) , but not nicknames.

I loved the episode of The Big Bang Theory where Howard Wolowitz was angling to be known as 'Rocket Man', but instead was nicknamed 'Fruitloops'.

lol at insisting on being called PEG. Reminds me of Peg feed. Argh!

there's a lot of my male friends who have nicknames. Daz & Gaz are still in use for Darren and Gareth.

I alss have a friend called Harry, but he's known as Flash. I didn't actually know his real name for 10 years, no-one calls him Harry.

The other weird one is a Mark called Cueball, he's now approaching 40 and everyone, including his employers, call him Cue.

People giving themselves nicknames does smack a little bit of narcistic 'look at me'.

Completely agree. When someone insists on the nickname they've given themselves it tends to feel all a bit special snowflake. Nicknames are something other people give you, and it's up to you whether to go with it or tell them you prefer to be known by your real name.

If someone has given themselves another name because their real one has too many (for whatever reason) unpleasant associations, they would be likely to choose a proper name - John, Peter, whatever, but certainly not Dazza.

I have the opposite problem. My real name is a short form (Betty/Elizabeth would be a very accurate analogy) so when I meet people they want to call me 'Elizabeth' so as not to be too informal. Whereas my friends call me the equivalent of Bet.

Sorry OP, I wandered off a bit there.I think as is manager you are quite entitled to call him Darren, and to insist that he uses Darren when facing clients.

OP I tend to agree that 'Dazza' is silly in a work context!!

My boss has a nickname which everyone uses and is put on letters, website, etc and I can think of 3 or 4 other people I've known who've been known by nicknames that weren't related to their actual name. . I think it's fine as long as it's not something that embarrasses or offends people. Forms like school and job applications sometimes ask for your name and then 'what do you prefer to be called?' I assume it's normally straightforward (e.g. Steve rather than Steven) but it suggests that it's good practice to call people what they prefer to be called, rather than what their parents chose for them.

No idea which university you’re at, but the last department I worked in had a tenured professor with a skinhead, and one of those earrings which stretch your earlobe out, who used to come into work in doc martins and denims. Lovely bloke, incredibly well known in his field, but a bit eccentric.

I cannot imagine him batting an eyelid at ‘Dazza’.

In general, I’ve found it really varies by subject – during my DPhil I used to work as the departmental administrator for a small social sciences department in Oxbridge (trying to leave it vague to not out myself totally) and loads of the staff and students were pretty eccentric. A friend of mine worked at the business school and it was very stuffy. Obvs, you’ll know your department better but I don’t think that having a nickname is a total no-no in academia full stop.

big girl pants on.
sit dazza down.
explain that the clients are of a certain ilk and you will not introduce him to them by a nickname, it is unprofessional and just not done. you will however call him dazza around the office etc if that is his preference.

Peg is a well accepted shortening of Margaret

I work within an international environment and a lot of names would be deemed ridiculous on here but they are actually their given name

britbat Peg/Peggy is a long-recognised diminutive of Margaret.

Tradition plays a part when in a professional setting.

If Dazza were the CEO of a new, and successful, Shoreditch Tech City start-up, then we'd have to call him whatever he wanted!