In Latin America, your middle name usually is more important than your first name. Back in México, my family always called me “Carlos”, or when they were angry at me, they would call me by my full name, “José Carlos.”
In high school, the personal trainers at my local gym referred to me as “Charlie”, a playful and endearing act that revealed their belief in my potential to become a fit person.
When I emigrated to London for college, and then to the United States, I went about by my first name, “José”, for two reasons: one ideological and one practical. It was my way to reinvent myself and distance from the old family dynamics and values inherited up until then. It also served a practical purpose: in the UK and the US, your first name was more important than your middle name. So I went by José. It was liberating.
Now in my 30s, with formal education over (at least in the foreseable future) and a new job down the road as a lecturer, I am reconsidering many things about who I am and what do I stand for, among them the name that people use to recognize you. It has become clear to me for the last few years a need to separate your work-life from your social-life. I have the need to go back to my origins and embrace Carlos —albeit not entirely. Hence why I prefer “Charlie”: a playful, less serious equivalent to Carlos. It has the side-benefit of further assimilation with the Anglo-Saxon world (not that I am eager to), where I have spent for most of the last decade.
José will remain how I am known by colleagues and students —the professional world.
Charlie is how I will introduce myself to new and existing friends, to the public online, to the social world.
This duality can co-exist.
So be it.