Nickname gone normal - suggestions please

[Usuwi]

I wonder if anyone else has been in this situation. My DD is known only by a nickname, "Nonie" which I think is very babyish, not really something to carry through life, especially as it sounds, well, negative!

Her real name is Honora Coco Rose. We never use Honora at all, but we call her Nonie Coco Rose. I've often used Rose on official forms. Now at school, everything has Honora on it and they tried to teach her to write that. She can write okay anyway, but she insisted on writing Nonie. I was going to ask them to call her Rose, she's a sharp little cookie and has put in a bid for Coco.

DH and me spent half term agonising over "how did we get in this mess, oh yes, we know how, but what the heck do we do?" Has anyone dealt with similar situation and how, or are you a teacher who had to deal with this?

Part of the problem is my parents and their brothers and sisters none are known by the first of their given names, and most have a nickname and a real name, so I didn't see the mess I was going to get into.

My DD1 is Elizabeth but we have never called her anything but Lizzie. We put Lizzie in the 'known as' section of the school papers and her 2 teachers so far have called her Lizzie. However, her books say Elizabeth and the register in an online thingy which the teacher projects onto the whiteboard and this also says Elizabeth. The HT also, always calls her Elizabeth and all official school letters and end of year reports have said Elizabeth.

Tbh, DD1 doesn't seem to mind. She knows she is Elizabeth and that Lizzie is a short or family version of that. It doesn't confuse her at all, although, she did need to learn how to write Elizabeth at some point in Reception. She could already write Lizzie and they were more than happy for her to write that on work but her Reception teacher felt, quite rightly, that it was important for her to be able to write Elizabeth at some point too.

So I guess what I'm saying is why not stick with Nonie as her everyday name if both you and she likes that and school are happy using it. Honora then only need be used for official stuff.

Names are a funny one, I seem to have a habit of twisting names all over the place! dd is called Heather Mae, when she was a tiny prem baby it just seemed like such a big name so we started calling her H.M which I then butchered to Hem and after a time of me calling her 'Ernie' (Ernest Hemingway) it eventually became Hemmie and is to this day (dd is 6.5 years old), we do have the issue of people thinking it is Emily or other names that sound similar, especially as she has issues in her mouth that make her speech harder to understand, you can't blame people, Hemmie isn't even a real name! She gets called her full title when she is in trouble and mil often calls her Heather, she has always been Hemmie at pre-school and then school without problem as this is the name she calls herself and learned to write. She is getting to the age where she is exploring the options with her name, she recently decided to be Hemmy rather then Hemmie and is toying with the idea of being Heather Mae, Heather or indeed Mae, I simply tell her it is her name so her choice, I would rather Hemmie of Heather Mae but it isn't my name so now she is older I loose the right to choose.
I think in your case OP you need to pick a name and stick to it, I see no problem with Nonie, I don't see it as babyish (I would find Coco more babyish to be honest even though I do like it, your dd has three lovely names) or negative. I would follow your dd's lead, it is her name, what ever is picked now will probably see her through her primary school years, once a name is established with in a group it becomes next to impossible to change it (shown in me still writing Hemmie even though dd has edited it to Hemmy of late).
When we were expecting ds I played around with every option knowing now that I can do strange things to a name, we chose Malachi and that is what he is known as although I have called him Mally Moo or Mooclules often from birth it is clear it is just a pet name for use by Mummy only!

From a teacher's perspective, I have taught many children who have an official name on register, reports etc and then use shortened version etc. Also had a child who was always known by his initials - think TJ.

School policy was as long as they could write their full name, we called them what parents were happy with/they themselves - eg I had a child who always called herself a shortened name - think Katie for Katharine - but parents always used the longer version. I went with what child had asked for in the classroom. I would also not have a problem with calling child by middle name. Not sure if this helps - once you decide let school know and they will use it.