What's in a name?

Quite a lot, it seems (well for some people at least)

Today I had the interesting experience of trying to bank a couple of cheques which had my first name listed as "Caro", rather than "Carolyn" (which is my actual name, and the name in which I have my bank account).

The bank teller seemed quite confused at the truncation of my first name, and queried it. I explained that it was a shortening of my name, by which I was generally known to most of my friends and colleagues. She then asked me if I had any ID in this name (which, of course, I don't, because all of my ID is in my full name- derr!). She then got a bit flustered, and made me sign the backs of the two cheques (not sure what that would do), and fortunately she stopped short of demanding a retinal scan or DNA sample to confirm my identity, but I was getting a bit nervous there for a minute!

Interestingly she had no problems at all with a third cheque which just listed my two initials and surname, rather than full firstname... (go figure!)

It made me wonder- if my full name was "Catherine", and the cheque was made out to "Cathy", would the teller have been thrown into such a quandary?

I suppose I should be glad that a teller was paying attention to what was actually written on the cheque, (in the same way that I get excited whenever a shop assistant actually checks the signature on the back of my credit card- it happens so infrequently)

This kind of reminds me of the time when I first started working at the GP Division way back 9 or so years ago. I had decided that since this was my first ever "grown up" job that paid a proper wage, then perhaps I should try to act grown up, and so took advantage of the opportunity to reinvent myself, back to my original identity as "Carolyn", after being known as Caro to all my friends for a number of years.

One of my friends told me of an instance when he rang me at work, asking to speak to Caro... and after a brief moment of confused silence got the reply, "oh you mean Carolyn?" Unfortunately my attempt to be grown up didn't last, and after only about 6mths, everyone at work, including my various bosses (and key contacts from other organisations!) all called me Caro... so I decided to give up and not fight it any more (I was siding with the Daleks on this one: "Resistance is futile" :-)