…should never be called Liz.
When I was born, almost fifty-one years ago, my parents, who were now naming their fifth kid and decided to continue their run of naming kids after themselves or other family members and so opted to name me after my maternal grandmother. I loved my grandma, but her given, legal name was Bessie.
Back in that long-ago time at the Catholic church they attended, no self-respecting priest was going to baptize anyone Bessie, and so my given, legal name was logically determined to be Elizabeth. And then I was promptly tagged with the nickname Bess.
And while I really, really, REALLY hated that nickname growing up (for example, when you’re a relatively-chunky, red-haired girl it’s really uncomfortable when you realize that every cow in every book you read in class is named Bess) and really, really, REALLY wished we’d had a relative named Jenny for me to be named after, I finally went with the flow and grew to adopt this practice:
I introduce myself as Elizabeth, because no one ever hears Bess correctly and so everyone starts calling me Beth, which is a lovely name but it describes someone who is not me, who is Bess.
And this practice is 100% spot on: no one ever mishears Elizabeth. However, a disturbing number of people decide they can now call me Liz. And while Liz is a lovely name and I have known many wonderful Lizs Liz’s Lizzes it is most emphatically not my name.
(True Story: in high school, my bestest friend was a girl named Liz. It seemed natural one evening, after some partying, to start calling her Lizard. She didn’t mind; she just started calling me Bessturd, which is, to this day, still a fond memory.)
Now, you can’t let this nicknaming thing continue, lest you wind up with an entire corporation of co-workers calling you by a name that makes you cringe. Ya gotta stamp this stuff out like the nascent forest fire it is. And my usual dodge is to get to the offender (and I really mean offender, as I cannot imagine much ruder than imposing a nickname on someone without knowing that the person in question uses the nickname. Last time I checked, there are about five million variations on Elizabeth….ya gotta check before you start picking names out of a hat) and inform them that:
my closest friends and family call me Bess. If you must call me something other than Elizabeth, that’s the name to use.
This has worked every single time but one: the offender either goes back to Elizabeth or starts using Bess, which is perfectly acceptable as while I persist in being a relatively chunky redhead I don’t run into cow references any more. The one time this dodge didn’t work, the offender kept calling me Liz but he is such an insanely sweet person I didn’t have the heart to harbor a grudge.
So, to sum up: you can call me Elizabeth, or you can call me Bess, or you can, if you have consumed three too many tequilas you can even call me Bessturd, but don’t ever, ever, EVER call me Liz. Unless you, too, are so insanely sweet I won’t be able to hold a grudge, but there’s no way to know this beforehand.
© E.S. Evans 2010
Mom, Interrupted 
All my life I’ve been called Elizabeth. It’s a lovely name for sure… but it’s not mine. NO ONE seems to understand that Eliza is a name in and of itself. It’s not a nickname. Teachers used to tell me that I was mistaken; that my name really was Elizabeth. OMG, so frustrating…
I seem to have adopted the nickname of -e- as I’ve gotten older, which is fine. I never wanted to be Liza or Liz. Again, lovely nicknames but they aren’t *me*.
If you think people turning Bess into Beth is bothersome you should see the list of names I’ve started at work. Some are rather obvious (Elisa, Alexis, etc.) but Elonia? Giselle? Ummm… yeah.
People automatically shorten my name to Angie. It’s mildly annoying, especially since I’m viewed as a snob when I correct and inform them my name is Angela. One small blessing in disguise, I know to hang up on anyone asking for “Angie” when I answer the phone, as it’s a dead give away that it’s is a salesman or someone pandering for money.