In thinking that if you pick a name for your child, that's what you should call them.

[whiteKnightblacKstars]

Have namechanged in case person i'm talking about is a member.

My SIL had a son and gave him a certain name - which can be shortened.

Since birth she has never called him by his full name and insists on calling him by this shortened version (which to me is nothing more than a nickname)
To all of her friends its really cool that her soon has this shortened name. And my DH reckons that she doesn't like the full name at all and that is why she uses the shortened one, and he also reckons that she does it to impress her friends with her 'cool' ways. (She named him after her and DH's Uncle who passed away while she was pregnant) DH reckoned that she only gave him the name to bring the family's focus back to her after the funeral.

AIBU to think that she should have named him something she intended to call him. I realise that its not really my place to say what she should be calling her son, but to me its just daft to give your child a name and then NEVER use it.

Of course YABU!

I would only pick a name where i liked both shortened and lengthened versions (sammy for sam, mikey for mike etc) People don't use nicknames because they are lazy - it's out of affection. That's why one syllable names end up getting lengthened.

We gave ds1 a name where there is a cute shortened version, going with the theory that he could use the long version if he preferred when he was older. We always had the intention of making it clear what his full name was (and we have done so with ds2 who also has a name that can be shortened). This plan fell by the wayside when we realised he was autistic and had speech problems and we felt it would be too confusing to suddenly start bringing the other name into the equation. What we have done though is make sure that everyone (doctors etc) now uses the short version so I suppose effectively we have changed it. This thread just made me realise that ds1 doesn't really realise what his proper name is!

There's Royal precedent here!

'Fraid YABU.

My daughter and both nieces all have very pretty "long" names and are almost always addressed by all of us by their "short" names.

We picked the long names because (a) they are pretty, (b) the girls are named after relatives and (c) we wanted to give the girls the option of choosing either their formal names, or a more informal shortened version. All three of them use their shortened names at the moment but in future may well want to revert to longer names. Their name, their choice! I do the same myself, i.e. use the shortened version of my name.

Does it really matter?

YABU I am afraid but I can see where you are coming from.
For some reasons I have never called my two daughters with their 'proper' name for at least the first year ir so if not more. Somehow it just did not fit, maybe they were to small to carry a proper name... I really do not know but they both have had a million of ridiculous nicknames for many months to the of both my mum and MIL.
But now that dd1 is 4 she is most times called by her name.

At the end of the day who cares?

DD has a long name and gets called by a short name as I want it to be well established before she starts school and the little beasts start shortening it to awful names

So many people also think it is terrible to call your child a shortened version of a longer name, eg Charlie rather than Charles.

And do you not approve of nicknames either as it amounts to the same thing?

You can't please everyone so you may as well please yourself, YABU.

we shorten ds name to make it easier for dd to say. Yabu. Her kid, her choice.

I use a different version of dd's name depending on what language I happen to be speaking to her at the time.

Cripes, YABVU! People like to colloquialize names, it's friendly and affectionate. My name is ONE syllable and still people feel the need to shorten it to the first letter, or lengthen it, or add a Y to the end - it's just a nice, familiar way to address someone! (Provided they don't mind).

I'm the other way round TBH, it's a pet hate of mine when someone names a child an obvious 'nickname' of a longer name (Freddy, Charlie, Archie, Bobby etc) and not the full name. Presumably because it's 'cuter' and suits a baby better - but what about when the baby is 25, 40, 80?

I haven't read all this yet but I think YABU...my son is called by his shortened name and I only registered his full name as I thought that would suit him more in adulthood/job applications etc.

I chose names for my DC which could be shotrened. They have both stuck with their full names as it happens but the choice remains.

My Mum found her parent's wedding certificate recently as I started looking at our family tree. My Grandad was known as Wilhelm, turns out he was Peter Wilhelm. My Grandmother was known as Mia, short for Maria. To Mum's surprise she was Ana Maria. Neither of them have their full names on their grave as none of their three children knew this until recently.