That was exactly my point!
It's fine to go by "Joey" when the person calling your name is a kid from the neighborhood gang, standing outside of your home, impatiently throwing a baseball into a mitt.
Outside of the fields of entertainment and sports (and the Mafia), it's undignified.
Regards,
It could be the equivalent of the Southern penchant for calling all James people Jimmy, including one of our Presidents.
P.S. also a penchant for calling men by their middle names. In my father’s family he was the only male who was called by his first name, and he never knew why, though he passed that unique practice down to his son, who passed it down to my son.
And Frank "Pal Joey" Sinatra wants a chat too.