The Happy Accident of Being Called Charlie,

Fourteen years ago, I decided I was a bit sick of being called Charlotte, because being from where I am from people don't pronounce it properly and it has annoyed me for longer than I can remember. For reasons that have never been known to me I've never been much of a fan of because called Chaz or similar and I got to the age where Lotti felt a bit infantile on me. (No judgement for any older teens or adults called Lotti, Lottie, or any other spelling, it was just how it felt for me.) I decided I was going to try out Charlie, and if I hated it, well then, it was two years of college and then I was moving to London, so it didn't really matter. Yes, I had already decided I was going to London at that stage, even though I had never even heard of the university I went on to attend. 

When I use my actual name online or I talk to people in public, I've found people have a tendency to use pet names that drive me crazy. It was particularly bad when I worked in a DIY store and there was a tendency to call all of the guys mate and then single me out (I was usually the only girl in the store as there weren't that many of us in the company) by calling me either darling or sweetie (or something similar) and it winds me up. In that particular context, it was because the guys doing so looked at me sceptically when I gave them answers to the questions they were asking, and that was if they got over the reluctance of asking a woman in the first place, they would look at me sceptically and then try and locate the nearest male member of staff and then be satisfied by the same answer from them. One of the things I have always taken pride in is that if I don't know the answer to something, I will say I don't know, because I would rather do that than anything else. Whilst most of the people I met in the store didn't know me or know anything about me, I still took it personally (joys of ADHD, particularly when it's undiagnosed) and it's also really sexist. Assuming someone doesn't know something because of their gender is actually properly sexist even when you're not doing it intentionally. To be fair, I should have expected it a little bit, but really it wasn't a good job for me, and one of the reasons I got it was because I was a woman. I think the company were catching shade from somewhere about their diversity figures and the lack of women in the business, or they were trying to anticipate that it was going to happen eventually, so they were looking to recruit more women. 

Although I have never changed my name officially, I have considered it a number of times but I do occasionally go back to using Charlotte, though very rarely. My online name has been CharliesWrite for long enough that for things like emails, Charlie is ambiguous enough that a lot of people assume I'm male and have a tendency not to talk down to me, assume that I don't know things, and also tend to call me mate instead of the sort of pet names that make my skin crawl a little because they're a little too much like terms of endearment from someone that I don't know. It wasn't the reason I actually chose to use Charlie, but it was a happy accident. Honestly the decision to use the name Charlie was such a quick one, that the only thing I thought about was not being Charlotte, that Lotti had T's in it as well and that always caused a problem, and I wasn't that big of a fan of my middle name to start using that instead. (It's not horrendous or anything, but I just didn't fancy being called Elizabeth, because it didn't seem to fit me, and neither did Liz, Lizzie or Eliza, though if I had decided on Lizzie I would probably have spelt it was Lizzi because I really had something against the letter E, though I don't know why.) 

There are times when that ambiguity has caused a problem. My ex partner took great exception to the fact that my name was unisex, because he used to be 'accused' of being gay and dating a man called Charlie. He liked having photos all over his Facebook of the pair of us because at least then he could show people photos and 'prove' that he wasn't gay. It was something I never really challenged him on at the time, but it was always something he was pretty sensitive about and looking back on it I really wish I had asked him why the hell he cared. The idea that anyone would think he was gay was a really touchy subject. Then again, it did seem like when the conversation came up it was more that people were making fun rather than getting genuinely confused and in all honesty, I find it disappointing that people still think it's something to be joked about, or that me being called Charlie was such a big deal to some people. Anyway, being the stubborn person that I am, when he asked me to change my name for that reason or at least let him use a different version of it, I said no, but it made me realise I had become somewhat attached to the name, and what it represented to me and about me. I had kind of adopted it into being a part of my identity, and it's something I'm no longer quite sure how to put down, even if I wanted to. Even if my screen name confuses people when I'm trying to tell them how to spell it. He still tried to get me to use either Char, Charl or that one I've always hated of Chaz (God, I don't know why I hate that one so much but I really, really hate it on me) and I was just too stubborn to respond, or I would just ask him what my name was. Whether it is thankfully or sadly I don't know, but I was the more stubborn one, so the name Charlie stuck.