How to make Android recognise my contacts by nickname

The Google application brings a very powerful voice assistant. After tapping the microphone (or saying the keyword “OK Google”) you can command a multitude of tasks with your voice. Simple but frequent things can be said to her, like “Call Anita Peralta.” And if “Anita Peralta” is a relative or a relationship with her, she can understand it too. That is, instead of pronouncing first and last names, you can order things like “call my boss,” “send a message to my sister,” or “send a WhatsApp to my girlfriend.”

Assign nicknames to Android contacts by voice

Everything is a matter of programming this voice assistant. It’s pretty straightforward. Say something like “Call my boss.” Google’s voice assistant will ask “Who is your boss?” You have to indicate the name of the contact in the phone book and then confirm the procedure with a “Yes”. This is done for the first and only time. The next time the “Call my boss” command is used, he will make the call immediately.

This scheduling or assignment can be canceled later without problem (if you change your boss, for example). To do this, the voice command to use would be “Anita is no longer my boss” (assuming the boss’s name is Anita). In the same way, this cancellation will have to be confirmed.

This feature only works if US English is set as the primary language in the Google app. For this reason, speech recognition for these commands is very imprecise and frustrating. It’s easier to assign nicknames manually from the phonebook, rather than using those voice commands:

Enter nicknames manually

To add the nickname to a contact, just go to the calendar application or «Contacts». Select the contact and use the “Edit” option (usually the button with a pencil shape). Then you just have to write what you want in the drawer that says “Nickname”. Using the example above, the nickname would be “boss.”

Likewise, this is a reversible process. When you want, you can delete the nickname of a contact and put it on another, so that the voice recognition works accordingly.

If the contact’s name is a word similar to that of the relationship or kinship with that contact, the voice assistant will recognize it and act intelligently. For example, if the contact has the name “Father” and the voice command “Call my dad” is used, it will call that contact “Father”. If the contact is registered as “Mum” (Mom), saying “Call my mom” will call that contact “Mum.”