A nickname is someone else’s first draft of you. You still get to write the rest.

A name somebody hands you is their early read, built from whatever they had: one moment, one feature, one joke. Drafts are allowed to be wrong, and they are allowed to be replaced. Trouble starts when you treat an outsider’s rough sketch as the finished portrait.

Ask whether the one you carry still describes you or describes who you were in sixth grade. If it fits, enjoy it. If it does not, let the newer people in your life meet the current version, and use your actual name when you introduce yourself.