> Wow. I thought I had it bad with "Thomas". Everyone seems to think that "Tom" is acceptable -- even when I go out of my way to say "it's 'Thomas'". I mean, to shorten it to "Tom", you have to cut the last two letters off and then drop a letter out of the middle. It makes no sense to me.
>
> I answer the phone here at work with "Hi, this is Thomas." On Monday, I had someone ask if Tom was there -- I replied, "Yes, this is Thomas [lastname]". His response? "No, I'm looking for Tom [same lastname]." It took him a while to understand that one was my name and the other wasn't.
>
> -Faux "Thomas!" Pas

I've heard that Richard Petty's mother pitched a fit with a sports writer once when his story said that Dick Petty won the race.
"If I'd wanted him called Dick, I'd have named him
Dick," she said, "His name is Richard." That was about 40 years ago and since that time,*Nobody* has called him anything but Richard, or sometimes King Richard.
Howard