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28 October
When, because I don't place when it began, did identifying oneself publicly by what are effectively nicknames become commonplace? ->
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 28, 2012
By which I mean - if I could find the answer (as there is somehow no Wikipedia® page for her yet) - was the name with which, for example, the new award-holder for jazz (in the Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme) was registered at birth Trish Clowes - does that name 'Trish' appear on her birth-certificate, or was she given a longer name, which she never uses?
Yes, there's ample, and even Shakespearean, precedent in, say, the name Jack for one's real name not being what one uses - he, just as much Prince Hal is really Henry, should be Sir John Falstaff*, and, on appropriate occasions, is. But, if he had a business card (or a web-site), since when, as a matter of general custom, would his proper name not have appeared formally on it?
So someone whose name might have appeared on what everyone else calls headed paper (and lawyers 'notepaper') as Peter Graham, M. Phil, or P. D. Graham, has - at some point - almost universally become identified as Pete Graham. That undoubtedly is what happens now, but I cannot say when it became the norm - it just is.
End-notes
* Both men, then, which reinforces their matey-ness, have a familiar form of name, by which they call each other. In the famous scene from Henry IV, Part II, when Hal - as he has planned - banishes Falstaff, whose embarrassing interruption Welles catches in direction and playing so well in Chimes at Midnight (1967), severe attention is called to him, what he calls himself, and what he is.
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