I introduced myself to Chris Gulker recently and he spotted me as a fellow person- with- first-name- Christian. I said, "Oh, you're a stealth Christian!" I found growing up that people who remembered my name as Chris eventually got around to calling me Christopher. Plus I just didn't answer to it. I didn't think "That's me," when I heard someone yell "Chris!"
In high school I knew an Irish kid named Christian who was called Christy (pronounced kristy). I thought that was an elegant solution. My grandfather dropped Christian and referred to himself as Tom, C. Thomas Spitznas. (Christian is a name more common among Scandinavians and Germans, and Grampy lived through two wars in which the Germans were the enemy. Christian Spitznas (loosely "Goodman pointynose") was just too much of a sauerkrauty wienerschnitzel frankfurter of a mouthful. Better to be Tom.
I wore my long improbably name like a badge of honor when I was a dorky kid. ("Maybe you should go back to the nerd committee," said Mal last night when I joking suggested "Voting is Fun" as the name of East Bay for whatever Dean's For's new VoterSalon plan, since renamed Parties for America.)
Christian T. S. Crumlish (I have Grampy's whole name and my father's Irish last name) and most people didn't call me Chris but some always do. They are the people who don't notice.
I guess if they spelled it chris. and pronounced it "Chris-dot" I could live with that but I settled on my xian handle even before I got online and I'm stuck wth that although people always ask me how to pronounce it and I give a different answer every time but that's another krinksby story.
