You will have noticed this seems a rather specific question, unrelatable perhaps, if your name is Dennis or Susan. But you will also grasp that this is just a way of expressing the real question, which is “Can I shorten your name from the one you actually use?”
The answer is no, you bloody can’t. Well, technically you can. There’s nothing I can do to stop you. But I won’t like it, so if it is an attempt to be matey, it will in fact have the opposite effect.
At least asking allows me an opportunity to say no. Those who ask are not really the problem, though they should still know better. I have, after all, had many more years to consider my options. But people rarely ask. Americans — or Amers, as I like to think of them — are especially committed to shortening other people’s names, seeing it as a sign of chummy informality, rather than an outrageous presumption.
Few weeks go by without someone chummily shortening my name. They don’t ask if I’m a Rob. They just decide I should be. This shows a basic misjudgment because Rob, in general, seems an easy-going, karaoke-nights, one-more-for-the-road type of guy. Whereas I am an uptight, grumpy, no-thanks-I’m-driving, don’t-call-me-Rob type.
This issue has acquired new urgency, because one of the final two candidates to be Conservative leader has suddenly become a Rob. Robert Jenrick was always a Robert, until this contest. Now, he has come out as a Rob. Perhaps he was always a Rob to his most intimate circle, or alternatively it is just one more policy shift from a man of no fixed ideological moorings. When we first met Robert, he was a liberal-conservative Remainer. Rob, on the other hand, turns out to be obsessed with immigration, ending net-zero targets and ordering the removal of Disney murals at asylum reception centres. These don’t seem like Rob moves? Maybe it’s more a Bert thing.
Anyway, this isn’t a column about Bert Jenrick. He is embracing the name change, either because he thinks it makes him seem more likeable or to distance himself from the more liberal-elitist Robert. (There are rightwingers who worry that, having won as Rob, he might then revert to being Robert.)
But it’s his choice. The issue is how to deal with others changing our name for us. You could just relax about it. But if I could be relaxed about it, I’d already be a Rob, wouldn’t I?
The second strategy is to correct people. If it happens over email, you could sign off with your version of “Robert (not Rob)”, followed with a smiley face to show no offence has yet been taken. That could make you look a tad priggish, which is annoying since a) you are being priggish and no one likes to be told that, and b) you are not the one in the wrong here. But you need to nip it in the bud early. Procrastination robs you.
The third approach is to refuse to answer to the short name. In person, don’t respond. On a phone call, you suggest the person must have the wrong number. I did once work closely with a Rob, so I always told people they were obviously looking for him. But this is just a more aggressive version of the second strategy and an unnecessary escalation best saved for repeat offenders.
We all have those we permit to Rob us. My oldest friend uses it but he’s been doing so since primary school, and five decades seems too long to have let it lie. Also, if I told him it annoyed me, he’d only double-down on it and probably switch to Robbie (a name acceptable only for Scots and toddlers). In any case, it is born of life-long friendship, and I’ve definitely called him worse. Relatives of my wife have also started doing it under the mistaken impression that association with her gives them renaming rights. Nicknames and variations on your surname are less of a problem, especially if they too were picked up in your youth, seem affectionate and aren’t rhyming slang for genitalia.
It’s not that I mind the name. It’s not unpleasant. I just associate it with people who don’t realise they are too old to be skateboarding. (I exempt my colleague Rob Armstrong, who is a top bloke in spite of his affliction.) Naturally, in revealing this I have opened myself up to years of Rob abuse. Then again, if Rob Jenrick wins, perhaps I’ll change my own name.
Email Robert at magazineletters@ft.com
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Dubbed the ‘greatest humourist the United States has produced’, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known better by his pen name Mark Twain, is probably best known for the characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
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