This is Phillip, my wonderful husband of 12 years.
He was named after his mom's dad Phillip Gordon, who was a captain in the Army Signal Corps.
"Phillip" is what you'll see written on my husband's birth certificate, and his family has never called him anything other than Phillip. He's never gone by anything else in his life.
His name has two syllables in it: Phil-lip. You can clap it out if you want to.
However, the world in general is absolutely convinced that his name is "Phil." Whenever we meet someone new, here's how the conversation goes:
"Nice to meet you, I'm Phillip."
"Well, gee golly, it's great to meet you, too, Phil."
Every. Time.
It's like some vast Truman Show -- style conspiracy, where everyone seems to be in on it except for us.
But we've lived in far too many places for them all to be working together against us: Minnesota, Utah, Ohio, and now here in New England.
Everywhere, he gets called "Phil." Even the emcee at our wedding reception called him Phil (and now that I'm thinking about it, I'm wondering why we paid that guy. I mean, shouldn't there be like a 5 percent discount for calling the groom by the wrong name?)
Now, I have nothing against the name Phil. In fact, the Phils I've known are hilarious, nice guys.
It's just not Phillip's name.
We've moved around a fair amount in our married life, but we plan to stay here in New England and never move again. We're putting down roots.
Which is why I was so concerned when Phillip came home from his first day at his new job here and casually mentioned that the plaque on his office door read "Phil Evans."
"You have to get that changed!" I cried. "Right now, before all your co-workers and your boss think you go by Phil and that becomes your name for the next 40 years you work there! It might already be too late!"
(You can see that I take this somewhat more seriously than he does.)
So off he went to Human Resources and asked for a new plaque with his full name.
The next morning, he showed up at work to find that they'd gone overboard and put this up on his door instead:
(This isn't the real thing, by the way, just an artistic representation. Phillip's work deals with government contracts and has some super-secret "ruin the blogosphere by not allowing photos" policy.)
Long story short, he's not "Phil" at work anymore. The downside is, he's now the snobby guy who has to have his educational title and middle initial listed with his full name at all times.
Oh, well. We can deal.
Jenny Evans is a writer, a perfectionist, a night owl and a Mormon mom of five who makes jokes at her own expense and blogs about her messy life with a houseful of kids at Unremarkable Files.
You can also visit her on Facebook.