Internal Familial Dialogue (not so internal anymore)

"Makes me glad for my folks' sake that in my
20s I didn't substitute my given name for something ridiculous my
buddies thought up."
"If you're Fenix, I'm Putz. They're exactly equivalent."
~My Grandfather

Since my family (Oregon and Eugene) are the ones who read this, lets open it up to everyone. I am pissed, and when I get extraordinarily upset during a week where things keep going wrong, I tend to have disproportionate reactions, and I am aware of that, and I am sorry.
So here is my e-mail I sent back to him.

Grandpa, my buddies didn't "think up" up this name. This name came into being through a lot of circumstances revolving around who I am and who I was - this name has meaning to me and those closest to me. Speaking of names that someone just thought up - "Connor" was just thought up - it means nothing. Also, ridiculous is a point of view. In your culture, William, Daniel, and Connor are "normal" names. In my culture, Haussatou or Kellyn or London or Kat or Braedon or Chahaylie or Vasha or any other names that I hear every day are acceptable.
In order, those people are: girl in my dance class, guy I worked with on Sedna, my circus partner, ex-girlfriend, roommate, friend, girl in the dance marathon last week. All of these are the birth names (or shortenings of birth names in the instance of Kat) and they are all accepted names in my culture. In my culture, your name is part of who you are - not just a combination of sounds that identify you from someone else. If that is all a name is, then we should all have numbers, and your number is determined through a mathematical formula involving your parent's numbers. At least that would identify you as their child - CONNOR IS AN IRISH NAME!!! (side note which was not in the E-mail, my descent is British and Moldovan, which is a small state that has been part of Russia and Romania at different points in history, but I am not Irish)
As a part of social convention, we are called by the names that our parents give us, just as it is social convention that I call you grandpa. However, Azim does not call his grandma such. He calls her (as close as I can represent in these characters without using IPA) "bumba". A TV character named Sheldon Cooper calls his grandmother "mee-maw." And why do they do this? Because that is what the family decided to call them.
side note 2: the name Connor is a name which was given to me because it was the only name my parents did not disagree on. Connor is not the name of someone in my family, or even of someone awesome in the past who I was named for. Connor is a name which represents not simply compromise, but the idea of LON - least objectionable name. Just so you are filled in on that one.
In English, you say "my name is bill"
In spanish, you say "me llamo bill"
The direct translation of the spanish? "I call myself bill"
That is how I choose to be recognized, not by "my name is" but by "I call myself"
So if you want to look at it that way, my name is connor, I call myself Fenix, and in respect for me, I would ask that you call me that as well, because that is the social convention.
Se llama Kat, pero su nombre es Katherine. Pero nunca se llamas "Katherine" porque se llama Kat y tienes respeto para su elección, y se llamas este mujer según al nombre que se llama.
I can say it better in spanish, but here is your translation: She calls herself Kat, but her name is Katherine. But you would never call her "Katherine" because she calls herself Kat and you have respect for her choice, and you call this woman according to the name she calls herself.
Her parents did not name her Kat, but we all respect that choice. Are you really willing to go and make that distinction of what someone is "allowed" to be called only if it is a shortening of the name? Is John an appropriate abbreviation of Johann?
My point, I suppose is this. You are not the decider of names - names have been evolving for thousands of years (and I might point out that 200 years ago, if my name were Connor and I lived in England, I would likely get the shit kicked out of me on a regular basis) and they will continue to evolve along with our languages, our cultures, and our ideas of social acceptability. As history has shown time and time again, those who resist change toward open-mindedness are trampled by the torrent of new information.
These people include those men who yelled "blasphemy" and were outraged at the first woman who decided that she didn't want to take her husband's name because she was not her husband. She was his partner in life, not his property. These are the people who were outraged that a woman was no longer a man's property. And you are the people who are outraged when a person wants to define themselves as themselves rather than letting their genetics define what they can and cannot do, including what to call them.
I was asked to calm down, and to let you go on your own and get your ranting out of your system but no. No more - if you want to continually insult me in front of my family and many of those who have chosen to accept my new name and those who have decided to make efforts to accept my new name in time, then I am going to yell and scream and show you how you are stuck in the past, and as history has shown a thousand times before: you will lose.

Welcome to the cyber age - if you hit someone like me with snide remarks that make no real point and are only designed to hurt my feelings, I will hit you back with everything I've got, and everyone will hear it.