View Message

My husband change his nickname at about the age of fourteen, upon entering high school. It was the best time to do it, since he was entering a new, much larger school where he would be meeting a lot of new people. Overall, the change took. By the time I met him, when he was twenty, all of his college friends used his new nickname, once my family got to know him, they all used his new nickname, when he started his career, everyone he knew through work used it, and basically all new friends he met after the age of fourteen used it.

---

There were a few holdouts. His parents, brother, and sister persisted in using the old one, as did those friends he had made before he decided to change it. Those were his oldest, closest friends, the ones who persisted through life. The other person who used his old nickname was myself---I didn't like his new one, and to me it never seemed to fit him...for the first few months I knew him, I didn't call him anything, and when I met his family and heard them call him his old one, I immediately started calling him by that, also. He didn't mind me doing it---he actually rather liked *me* doing it, but he didn't want to hear from it anyone else, though he tolerated it from his family and oldest friends.

---

The old nickname was Jamie and the new one was Jim.