My eldest son has a name that can be shortened but never has, not by family or friends, one of DH's aunties tried when he was little, but I stopped that straight up. It's only in the last twelve months that it's been shortened to the second half of his name, and that's only by the group the boys go camping with, Funnily, the shortened version is the same name as his great grandfathers name, which had nothing to do with the reason we used that name.

My youngest son is Alexander. When he was very young, we always used his full name, when he got to school, we had issues with teachers writing Alex on all his stuff, including reports, certificates, etc, I spoke with them over that, and now mostly it comes through properly. We usually call him Zander or Zandy, occaisionally it will be Alex but not usually from us.

Another issue completely OT, both my boys have two middle names, the schools do not recognise the second name and certificates come home missing them, I feel this is wrong as the certificate is in the wrong name, (obviously not belonging to one of my boys).