What's in a Name?

I was completely torn on one of two images to put up tonight. I've spent the whole day without taking any serious photos and decided I'd just play about with my bike lights in the garage (god only knows what the neighbours thought...). So it was almost Shine A Light, but instead there's a brief look at names.

Anth. Short for Anthony. Not Antony, take note, though most people don't. Apparently so named because my mum liked the thought of Tony as a nickname. But the north-east of England appears to render Anthony as Anth, and so it was. This carried on from family into school. I never really thought anything of it, save for the fact that I actually quite like 'Anth'.

And then I got to uni, met in with a couple of guys who asked my name, "Anthony" I replied. "Cool," said one, "Nice to meet you Tony." And there my personality split. Family and old friends knew me as Anth, new friends as Tony, which then persisted to working life as I started at the same firm as two chaps who were in my class at uni.

It was only in my current job that I made the decision to go back to Anthony. A very conscious thing that marked out to me that I'd never really got the hang of 'Tony'. It's what Mel calls me, but that's somehow different. There's another Geordie at work, an outlet for football chat, who within a day of meeting was calling me Anth. What goes around comes around I guess. The split personality is enhanced. My folks find it weird to have friends refer to me as Tony, and it sounded even stranger to me when my mum mentioned she'd called me at work and asked for Tony. It didn't sound right from her.

Does the difference in name change me? Not really, though I'm still not entirely comfortable with Tony. I prefer being Anth. Anthony for professional stuff and when I'm in trouble (it was always a handy indicator as a kid).

I could also delve into my middle name, David, and the fact that I was given it to be named after my uncle who died in infancy, only for my mother to find out when my nana died and she found his birth certificate that his middle name had been Anthony, but that would be cranking up the weird volume to 11.

EDIT: Hmmmm, didn't spot that this registered as being taken on Tuesday 25th... By my reckoning it was about an hour before it ticked over to the Tuesday. I wonder if this means I can use Shine a Light for Monday.... ;)

EDIT EDIT: It would appear not, how very odd. Ah, for some reason the clock on my camera had got an hour and a half ahead! So that makes it my earliest blip ever!