A Nominal Question

Dawn asked a question in the comments of another post, to which the answer deserves its own post.

"I have a random question. In college I (and others) called you Phil. I notice you seem to go more by Philip now. Do you prefer I call you that?"

Short story long, my full name is obviously Philip. Since my parents wanted a Biblical name, the spelling is from the Bible, which is one L. All of my life, I've dealt with people mis-spelling my name, adding a superfluous L. Now, I'm not so hung up on my name that I can't deal with mis-spellings every now and then, but when the digital age began, and I needed to choose an e-mail address, I chose Phil because it cannot be misspelled. Well, not easily anyway. Also, during high school, my friends (yes, I had friends) just started calling me Phil, it's quicker, not as pretentious sounding (I think the name sounds pretentious. Imagine a british accent, "Philip, would you like a spot of Earl Grey with your biscuits?"), so I stuck with it and never corrected anyone.

This caused great distress to my mother. She named me Philip, not Phil. So out of respect for her, I've been calling myself Philip for the last few years, although I've kept my e-mail addresses as Phil, for practical reasons. My business cards also say Phil Putnam, but only because my business e-mail is phil@doesyourmediapop.com, and I didn't want to create confusion. But if someone asks me my name, I say Philip.

It is confusing, I admit, and I do have to answer the question periodically, of which name I prefer. The answer is, either one. I don't really notice when someone uses Phil or Philip, I answer to both. The one exception is when my dad calls me "Phil". It sounds strange coming from him, and I think he does it to antagonize anyway.

So I hope that clears things up.