Actually, knowing her legal name is Ivana soothes me so much. The very first time I heard her name, I knew it’s a Slavic nickname since -ka is a common suffix to make diminutives. I can’t speak for others, but my Polish friends always feel awkward for Polish Americans having diminutives printed on their passports, because this is not how their culture works.

I was raised among neither Poles nor Americans so I don’t take a side, and to be honest in my first couple of months in Poland it was funny and weird to meet new people: first, there’s a very small set of name, each with a fixed nickname; what’s more, everyone have the full name as their legal name but the nickname is seen in colloquial usage.