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Sounds mean, but I would just ignore your parents… it’s your name. That’s what I did
You’ll probably go by it at some point. It’s better they accept it now than when you’re out of the house.
If it starts the same the transition should be easy, just have to give gentle reminders.
it seems like to me you might as well just go by this name as a different name entirely ! perhaps you could introduce yourself as nickname, but keep the full name on official documents. whilst people may get a little confused, a simple ‘i go by x’ makes sense to me !
as for your parents, maybe you could just go by your full name with them ? another option, if you’d like to, could be to change your name to the nickname - maybe they’d see it differently
I’d much rather keep it as a nickname than legally change to it. The nickname is for the sole purpose of avoiding changing my name legally which they’d dislike even more, and would probably be a lot more hurtful to them.
I’d say:
- Start using it with people who you know will be more open to it first. That might be friends who you can announce to ‘I’m using this name now’ and they will be ready to use it - that could then mean other people in your wider circle would catch on (e.g. at school, extra curricular, any clubs you go to etc., if all your friends are calling you [new nickname], then they might follow the example and start calling you it)
- Speak to or message teachers, club leaders, colleagues, bosses etc to say you will be using [new nickname] going forth - they could change such to your preferred name on registers, lists, rotas, name tags, name lists etc.
- Change your name to [new nickname] on any social media that you are connected to family and friends on, maybe do a little explanation?
- Speak honestly to your parents. Something like: friends/other people will be calling me [new nickname], but you don’t have to. You can call me [full name]
- Maybe this is mean, but if people aren’t listening to you or accepting it when you correct them when they call you [full name / obvious nickname] and you’ve corrected them multiple times, just - don’t respond - or say something like, oh, you were talking to me, I didn’t realise, sorry - I’m [new nickname] (I have done this when I wanted people to stop calling me Gracie)
Thank you! These are great tips