Learn English – The meaning of the phrase “much as”

I may apply general logic here:

semifinal -not fully final;
semisolid -not fully solid;
semi first-name -not a full first name

I'm not an American so exactly don't know how to shorten names. But let me try...

For instance, your friend's name is Rachel Fishman.

Now here...

Fishman: Last Name
Rachel: First name
Rach: Semi-first name.

Said that, if you are close to Rachel, you don't bother uttering the whole name. What I just said up there...

Hey Rach, bring me beer!

So, if Rachel says, "Let me introduce myself on a semi-first-name basis", I think Rachel is trying to be friendly with the audience/opposite person. Said that, on the very first meeting, Rachel wants to be an amicable person and does not want to get into formalities.

Something like...

Hey, that's okay, call me Rach!

Immediately, the opposite person gets feeling of friendliness.

[In your case, as I said earlier, I'm not sure how to shorten the word 'John' further!]

This is a logical answer, and I'm not sure whether it has something to do with 'culture'. Depending upon comments, I shall improve/delete this. Here, I just tried to help the OP.

"To take to the streets" is actually a relatively common recent idiom that means, depending on context, to publicly protest, to riot, or to rebel.

Simply to take to the streets or to go on the streets means to reject conventional, institutional channels of conflict resolution, especially the law, and to pursue direct action. source

Examples:

By 1910, when political leaders had proved themselves unable or unwilling to bring honest democratic government to Cuba, students, workers, and women took to the streets to demand reform, and discord and violence became a means of conducting politics.

When Russia's toilers took to the streets at the beginning of 1905 to challenge the three-hundred-year-old rule of the Romanov dynasty, Lenin was soon given the opportunity to apply lessons distilled by Marx and Engels on the revolutionary usage of the electoral process.

And throughout Europe protesters and rioters took to the streets to prevent governments from cutting workers' pay and unemployment benefits, increasing the retirement age and cutting pensions, and eliminating bonuses to families having children.

We can only assume that "takin' it to the streets" has a related meaning, but what exactly the Doobie Brothers meant is a matter of opinion. The lyrics certainly sound like a call to protest:

Take this message to my brother
You will find him... Everywhere
Wherever people live together
Tied in poverty's despair
Are you... Telling me the things you're gonna do for me
I ain't blind and I don't like what I think I see

Takin' it to the streets (takin' it to the streets)

where "it" refers to whatever they were protesting against. However, it may have other meanings that are not immediately obvious.