What's in a name?

Wednesday Night Music Club: One of the interesting things about loading up the Zune is that I can now listen to The Brunettes at work. This is slightly dangerous as it is more upbeat than almost anything I am used to. I just had to load a live clip of them just so I could explain how they seem to use more instruments than people on any given song. The drummer is playing the saxophone at the start of this one. That’s not even taking into account the choreographed dance moves. Very high on my list of favorite bands that no one has ever heard of.

I’ve been playing around with Facebook and in looking at it I discovered something that I figured that a lot of people always wondered about but never understood. Since I’m really low on topics right now I figure I’ll answer this Infrequently Asked Question: “Is it Chris or Christopher?”

It’s a rather complicated answer, really. People who know me always call me Chris if they’re not calling me EC or dumbass or any of my other nicknames. But I sign everything as Christopher, all of my writing is officially done as Christopher and even on Facebook that is how I am shown. (The blog is by EC though as I tend to write as a character more than myself on occasion.) There is a reason as to why I personally prefer Christopher in almost every setting.

As a kid I always went by Chris. Other than signing my full name, I was perfectly content with the shortened version. There is a story of my grandfather looking at me as a baby and saying that Christopher is an awfully long name for such a little boy. I liked Chris up until about sixth grade. At that point something happened without my permission or knowledge and it bothers me to this day. In sixth grade Chris suddenly became a girl’s name. I’m not kidding, occasionally when someone was putting together handouts in school without knowing who I was they would assume that I was a girl.

This bothered me for the obvious reasons. Being the geek and the nerd was bad enough; having a girl’s name didn’t help matters. I was more upset because up until then I never heard anyone outside of Chris Evert use Chris in that manner. It was always Christine or Chrissie. Now it was apparently common and my name had been usurped. It sucked royally.

(Oh, and if you ever want to see me get royally angry call me Chrissie. There is nothing I hate more in the world than that name.)

So I slowly started to use Christopher for everything. It started in high school aided by the fact that there were at least four other Chrises in a class of 140. By college everything that I did for school was as Christopher, which proved a great benefit when the professor would return assignments. My last name is rather unpronounceable so all I had to do was hear Christopher and I’d go up and save the professor the work of figuring it out. By the time I started working I just felt like a Christopher. It’s formal and adult. Sounds like the name of someone who has his stuff together. That’s why I used it for Facebook.

I don’t have any problem with my friends calling me Chris. It’s relaxed and friendly and I don’t need to be super formal all the time. But at some point I decided that impressions matter and Christopher portrays who I am. At least until I legally change my name to Red Dragon.