Today

Recently I made the acquaintance of a new baby belonging to one of my colleagues. Lovely little thing, but the best thing about her was her name: Alice. The reason? That's my name. "But I thought you were Julia", I hear you cry. And that's quite true, I am Alice Julia. It seems that to be called by a name other than your first given name is not as rare as all that. Quite a lot of people choose for themselves. They say on, for example, their 18th birthday "I'd like you all from now on to call me "Maxine" or "Cosmo"" or something else. If they're lucky, people actually remember to do it.

At my place of work, the HR advisor at one time just got people to use a different variant of their names if there was already someone in the company with the same name. So Tricia, who is called Pat by family and friends outside work, was asked to adopt the name as we already had a Pat and so on. This became more difficult as the company grew - with four Janes, four David's, and so on, what do you do? Anyway, it's rather dubious practice in terms of fostering good employee relations.

In My Day

Mamma's first name was Alice; I was named Alice Julia (Julia for my grandmother) not Julia Alice because Daddy hated glottal stops. Inevitably I was always called Julia as this made practical sense. Now, don't mistake me, I have always rather liked Julia. It's a graceful, elegant name with overtones of snooty-ness, has never been commonplace but doesn't cause people to say "pardon, how do you spell that?" It has caused some people to try to call me "Julie" but I give them short shrift.

It has, however, caused me some identification problems.

On my first day at grammar school I was taken into the great hall (very Mallory Towers, my school was) where there were great big blackboards, one for each class, with all the names listed on it. You were expected to identify your name and then join the appropriate group. Well, I could see no sign of a Julia. This cause administrative chaos while teachers and secretaries ran around with bits of paper. Eventually, I was the only pupil left in the hall. It suddenly occured to me that they might have me down as Alice. I took another look at the board. Still no Alice Dixon. There was an Alice Duncan - could they have made a mistake? No - their lists showed an Alice Duncan and an Alice Dixon and that Alice Dixon had already been shown to her class. We rooted out Alice Duncan (couldn't she read? How did she get into Grammar school anyway?), sorted out the mistaken identity and I was ready. Well, almost - I'd missed being shown around the place and didn't know how to find the cloakroom or toilets and was too shy to ask....

Much later, during my early 20's I experienced similar confusion during a visit to the Family Planning clinic. I was unmarried and in the '70's that meant that you must be in need of counselling and advice. So I was sent to the youth advisory section (I was 23, for heaven's sake!) where they all assumed a partonisingly chatty and familar manner. I was waiting my appoinment, reading or dreaming and quite ingored the voice chirpily called "Alice". I'd expected a "Miss Dixon" or at least"Julia". So I read or dreamed on for some time before realising they meant me.

And then there was the time my boss gave me a bonus cheque made out to "Alice Julia ....." when my building society knew me as "Julia....." They didn't want to accept the money and told me that in future I should carry my passport with me at all times.

So, it's not all that simple - just don't call me "Julie", all right?