How to get acknowledged by the right name even if people assume that they should use a longer formal variant?

Question

I am currently an undergraduate who likes to think about research a lot. My email is “[email protected]”, however in all my papers I am listed as “Zach Hunter”.

Frequently I will email people about their preprints, asking questions and pointing out slight typos or gaps in their proofs. They typically react very positively to my feedback, and often will put me in the acknowledgements. However, a large amount of the time I get acknowledged as “Zachary” rather than “Zach”.

I think it would be best to always be listed as “Zach” for consistency’s sake. Does this make sense? If so, how should I also about ensuring this?

Approaches I’ve considered

Personally I would feel quite awkward/presumptuous to preemptively say “By the way, if you do acknowledge me, please use ‘Zach’.” I want to avoid asking a “do X without Y” question, but I really want to avoid overselling the value of my comments which are just asked out of curiosity.

Another approach I’ve consider is using the signature “Zach (formally Zach Hunter)” in my first-time emails to people. However I fear this may be a bit too eccentric and not the most clear.

Any thoughts to these approaches or alternatives are welcome.

Answer 1

If you want consistency, the solution is to be consistent yourself and not send out emails that present you as either Zach or Zachary. If your emails give people the information that your first name is either X or Y where X is a common abbreviation for Y, they will assume that Y is the legal/formal name, and assume that that is the correct name to use for acknowledgements. And this is what you are doing now by sending your emails from the address “[email protected]”. So, get your university to change your email address, or create your own email address using a non-university email service.

I suspect that that will largely solve the problem. It’s possible that some people will still assume that Zach is short for something else even without any indications that that’s the case due to a strong cultural conditioning (just like some people from certain cultures occasionally assume my real first name is something other than Dan), but by and large people will go with the information you give them.

Answer 2

Does this make sense?

Not really, no.

In all English-speaking countries, it's normal for people to commonly be called an abbreviated version of their name, especially for longer names. Formally, their name is the full unabbreviated version. There is no inconsistency between the two, and no-one native to an English-speaking country or familiar with English names could ever find this inconsistent.

You may prefer that people call you by the abbreviated version, and that's fine. You can tell them that when you meet them, and you can put that in your email signature and on your business cards. But it doesn't make any difference for anything except what they call you when you meet.

Answer 3

If it was me, I probably wouldn't mention it to them directly. When you have publications and an 'academic presence', you can go by Zach (although Zachary would be slightly more normal). But if some people refer to you as Zachary in acknowledgements, it's fine. It won't hurt you down the line, as acknowledgements don't go in a database and nobody will be confused anyway.

If you happen to be emailing someone and you know their current draft is not final (e.g. they have acknowledged you on arxiv but the paper isn't published yet), you could definitely mention it as an aside. But I wouldn't bring it up otherwise, if it was me.

It's good advice to try to get an email address with your preferred name and always use it in signatures, etc. But again, I wouldn't worry too much if this isn't possible.

Answer 4

I don't see a solution, since you want to use something non standard for scientific/academic work. Most people prefer a more formal name rather than one less formal. I'm Buffy (no not really) but everyone IRL calls me Buff (ha ha). But for any formal purpose most people who haven't been told otherwise will default to the formal version.

I think that if you really want to be Zach then you need to keep informing people of it. If you want a non-default solution then you need to be vigilant about it. They aren't going to grok it on their own.

Alternatively, since you are still at the beginning of the academic journey, you could, perhaps switch to the formal version for formal communication. Even my university email signature (applied automatically) has the formal version of my name.

Answer 5

Is it possible that you just see a problem where there is none? Do you really need to seek consistency or perfection in this matter? You seem to be OK with people using the short form of your name, then why worry when people use your legal first name?

Answer 6

In business (at least at the academic hospital where I work) I usually look at how an email to me is signed to choose a response name.

So if [email protected] writes to me:

"Can you send me a copy of the NPO guidelines?

Bob"

I know how to respond.

And when someone writes to you as Zachary, respond as Zach. The second time: "Please, just Zach -- only my mother uses Zachary"

And these days we also have pronouns to list and check, so being pedantic about your name is not a big deal.