Okay, it’s come to this. A post about my name.
My father’s given name is Charles, but to some people he’s Chuck. To others, he’s Charlie, and to others still, he’s Chip. Different people call him different things, and that made sense to me growing up.
My given name is Stephen. When I was a kid, I hated the way ‘Steve’ sounded. I insisted on being called Stephen. So, to my family, I was ‘Stephen.’ I still am.
As I got older, I started to get a little concerned that the name Stephen sounded a little hoity-toity. A little too fancy for middle school. So, I started going by Steve. Through middle school, high school, college, and into my young adult life in Chicago, I would introduce myself as ‘Steve’.
In the last few years, I’ve made some steps to get away from that nickname and go by the name I call myself: Stephen. If I meet new people, if I get involved in a new project or organization, I’ll go out of my way to introduce myself as Stephen. It is the name I prefer, because it’s the name I’ve always preferred.
And while I appreciate my friends and coworkers picking up on this change, while I truly admire everyone for being respectful of a person's’ preferred name, I want to make it plain that if you called me Steve before, I don’t mind it at all and actually prefer if you keep calling me that.
I grew up with people calling my father every single nickname they could wring out of ‘Charles’. It seems like I’ve inherited this murky mishmash of names, but strange as it sounds, I consider that a blessing.
So, in summation, call me Steve if you’ve been doing that for years, because if I introduced myself to you as Steve, I did it because I wanted to and because I wanted you to call me that.
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