You can call me "Al"...

[wpbinzel]

I have shared this with Eva, but the off-the-top-of-my-head response was Albert J. Beveridge's Abraham Lincoln 1809 - 1858 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928). On page 535 of Volume I, he wrote: "he spoke to all but two of his close friends and associates at the bar by the family name, rarely by the Christian name, ... and he was similarly addressed as Lincoln, not as Abe nor as Mr. Lincoln." Beveridge's source, as noted by Eva, was Frederic Trevor Hill in Lincoln the Lawyer, New York, 1906, page 175.

But that does not answer her original question, i.e., what is the source of the Lincoln's oft-reported dislike of the name "Abe"? That he did not use it seems to be the custom of the time. Few men used their first names in correspondence and conversation, and even fewer used their "nicknames." (Initials or abbreviations of first names in conjunction with last name seems to be the 19th Century norm.) Compliance with or preference for current custom is not necessarily emblematic of "dislike," and I do not know the original source of the claim. Herndon would seem a good place to start, but I do not recall seeing it there.