Nathanial?

[Freixene]

It’s a bit of a compromise as my partner doesn’t like Nathan but we both like Nate as a shortening.
Is it too long/much of a mouthful? We only have a short surname

I love this name. I would have used it for my son, but unfortunately it doesn't go with our surname.
I know a couple of Nathaniel's of differing ages, both go by Nat as an abbreviation.

I like Nathaniel. I prefer Nathan though.

He will get over this by age 5.

......
OP, are you familiar with the Big Nate series of books? They are very popular right now among young readers.

I love Nate! Not keen on either of the longer versions though.

I have a Nathaniel, who goes by the shortened version of Than. His grandfather called him 'Nathan' once and got short shrift of my ex that if we'd wanted to call him that, then we would have. And my ex tried to call him 'Nat' - but my stroppy little boy refused to answer to it. His friends call him 'Nate', though all of his teachers apparently had to use the full version otherwise he'd ignore them... but his sister was the same regarding her name.

He's 19 now and has never encountered another boy in any of his schools with the same name as him, likes that it's "different" without being unique, and will undoubtedly revert back to the "proper" form of it as he gets older. Actually, I've just asked him if he likes his name ("Yeah...") and if he's ever been teased or bullied about it ("No...") and if he'd rather I'd called him something else entirely ("Fuck, no!").

(I actually wanted to call him 'Nate' for short, because, like you @Freixene, I really like it as a shortened version... until my ex very patiently explained to me post-delivery that our oldest's shortened version of her name rhymes with it, and that it would make us sound twee beyond belief... then had to find me cream cakes to apologise because I was sobbing so much... 😂)

I have a nearly 3 year old Nathaniel 😊 we usually use his full name but when texting etc call him Nate and that's slowly starting to be used more to his face now too. I didn't love the name at first (it was a compromise name) but now I love it and Nate definitely suits his personality which is why it's starting to be used more. I hate Nathan and Nat but luckily only one person has ever called him either of those and we just corrected with we prefer to Nate as his nickname and there's been no issue since. I find his name is regularly misspelled though which surprised me. He is Nathaniel but it often gets written as Nathanial