What an interesting question! I've always felt that my given name didn't reflect who I felt/thought I was. When my parents immigrated, they changed my and my older brother's names bc they must have thought our original names would be too hard to pronounce/remember.
I always felt that the original 'me' had been jettisoned by providing me with another name, and that someone new and somewhat false had replaced her. My parents rarely called me by my given name thereafter, which only reinforced our mutual alienation/estrangement.
I've always had negative associations with being called by that new name, bc my mum called me that and I had an exceptionally conflicted relationship with her. I was glad that my identity papers (passport/driver's license) listed my original name bc it was as if I could take 'refuge' in being that 'other' person (and she rarely called me by my original name).
My siblings, interestingly enough, tended to call me nicknames all my life, which always felt good. My friends would often call me by my last name, and I realised at one point that I also tended to call friends by nicknames or by their last names as a way to express affection. I'm still not crazy about my name, but I think of it as having administrative utility. It's fine as a professional identity (and I don't dislike it enough to want to legally change it), but for people who really know me and with whom I feel safe and accepted, I'm a different person, the one that I relate to the most by other names/nicknames.
Names are very powerful, and the things we tell ourselves or call ourselves are absolutely going to resonate at the deepest levels...
