A question about labels

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I recently got my diagnosis the other day (woohoo) after being lazy about it for a while. While I was doing the interview I kept referring to myself as an aspie or having aspergers because during my research that was the label I found myself identifying with; however the doctor would refer to it as high-functioning autism (a term I also found in my research). I know that the label change has been recent, where now all autists fall under the spectrum, with your functioning capability being you 'sub-label.' What is the difference, if there is any, between the new identification (low/med/high-functioning) and the old one (aspergers)? Is it wrong to identifiy myself as an aspie?

It's wrong in the sense that it is incorrect, aspie is no longer a thing.
But it is not wrong in the sense that it is okay to refer to yourself as it and you should be let be about it.
I refer to myself as autistic. It for me seems to both be taken a bit more seriously and also is more inclusive to people.

I recently wondered that for myself and found this article on the subject:
https://www.autismspeaks.org/family-ser ... nd-hfa-dif

Tl;DR : There does seem to be slight difference to what those things used to be, one quick thing seems to be if you had significant delay in speech development as child (HFA) and if not (Asp.).

But the reason everything is now Autism Spectrum is because all these labels are just loose umbrella terms and there's always going to be high individual variance even if you are right next to each other on spectrum. I think you are going to have to determine for yourself what is closest to you, I think there is still a lot of unwarranted negativity with being called an "autist", so most people prefer still calling themselves Aspies

"Aspie" is more fun.

There is no REAL anything in labels. It is just stickies doctors use to put us in categories. Then the categories are used by doctors, educators, government programs, etc., to decide what they should do with you.

You can refer to yourself however you want. Aspergers is still very much still in general use, at least in the US.

What blazing said.

But if you wanna get technical aboutit: the term "high functioning autistic" was already used when aspergers was still used. HFAs and aspies pretty much amounted to the same thing as adults (the top of the heap of autistic folks in functioning). But the main factor they used to figure out which hopper that they threw you into (HFA, or aspie) was when you learned to speak as a baby. If you learned to talk at the normal time...you're an aspie. If you were delayed in acquiring speech then you were "autistic" - but high functioning.

They have done away with aspergers as a distinct label, and have folded it into HFA. However ...if you look closely at your official diagnosis (these days) you may see "Type One autistic without speech delay", or "type one autistic WITH speech delay". If you see the former than you're basically the same animal that would have been labeled "aspergers" a few years ago. If the later than you would be HFA, even old school style. Lol!