I was calling up to my daughter this morning, to tell her breakfast was ready, and it struck me that I never in a million years would have predicted that I would end up using the nickname I most often do.
One of the reasons I fell in love with her name is because it had an abundance of nickname choices. I didn’t love one of the nicknames – the most common one – because it seems to be fairly common overall, both as a nickname for her name… but also as a nickname for other names… or even as a name by itself. But her name was in our family tree, and my husband and I both loved it, and it had ALL those other nickname possibilities… and I had fallen in love with one of the (lesser used) nicknames in particular.
Let’s say, for example’s sake, that her given name is Carla (which it is not), and I had been sure, just sure that I would call her LaLa. But instead, I almost exclusively call her Carly – the very common nickname I had wrinkled my nose at early on.
It really is so funny how naming works. Because now that “Carly” is inextricably associated with my darling child, I love it.
A couple of times, I have given LaLa a go, just to see what would happen. (Carla is fine with this; she seems to find it sort of novel, that I had planned to call her LaLa.) But not only does LaLa seem very separate from Carla-the-person, it feels odd in my mouth.
I also love that her friends have come up with their own separate nickname for her: Cars. It’s so cute, and I never would have imagined it when I was choosing her name. Sometimes I call her Car, sure, but Cars seems different in a way that I find so charming. Well. Perhaps you’d have to be here, in my brain, to see it.
Who knows why we never gave LaLa a fair shake from the beginning. Probably it’s because we refer to Carla, 90% of the time, as Carla. I use the Carly nickname a lot more these days than I ever have before; perhaps I am getting lazy in my decrepitude.
Oh! One unforeseen benefit of going with Carly over LaLa: One of the dogs down the street is LaLa. The dog is only a few years old, so I’m guessing that if we had gone with LaLa, the neighbors would have chosen something else. But maybe not!
Did you have a nickname growing up? Do you now? I’ve had a couple over the years. My parents planned a nickname for me, based on squishing part of my first name together with a common nickname for my middle name. That sounds really weird when I can’t just share it with you, but that’s how they came up with it. They LOVED it. In fact, I think I even went by that name for some time. But – and I remember the event clearly, even if I can’t remember at all how old I was – I was enrolled in ski school at some ski resort when I was little, and someone mispronounced my nickname in such a horrid, detestable way that I immediately and vehemently refused to answer to that name ever again.
Later on, in high school, a couple of kids called me Susie. But it was irregular and there were only a few specific people who did so. I never introduced myself as Susie or anything.
In college, one of my beloved roommates started calling me Suz, which stuck. That’s how I began referring to myself. My mom and my husband and a handful of other people (almost exclusively college friends) still call me that today. Aside from that, my husband doesn’t use any nicknames for me. Sometimes he’ll call me “Babe.” But that’s it.
Once college ended, I went back to using my full name at work and when I met people. So most people just call me by my full first name.
The lack of nicknames almost makes a little wistful, I guess, because I am a very nickname-y person (though I try not to be annoying about it). Obviously, if you don’t like a nickname, I will refer to you by whatever name you choose. But I tend to have multiple endearments for my nearest and dearest. As I said earlier, I refer to Carla as Carly (most often), and then Car, and then C, but I also call her Little Cat or Kitten (because she used to make a purring sound after she drank milk when she was an infant) or Honey Bun or Cutey Patootie or Sweetheart or whatever strikes my fancy in the moment. I have a variety of sobriquets for my husband. I even still call my brother by his childhood nickname, which I am sure he LOVES (but he has never bristled or asked me to stop).
I too love a nickname! I have a bog standard nickname I use exclusively (as you can see) which now comes with 1970s/mom associations. I find it fine i suppose? but when my little nephew started calling me Bobbie years ago I was tickled and adopted it enthusiastically, with the family, at least. My kid’s name was chosen by his birth mother and I love that too – it’s a classic with a fun nickname. (Imagine if she’d called him something less appealing or something from my no way list? I wonder if I had come to love it? But luckily and amazingly, it was a name from my shortlist and is also the name of his birth grandfather so phew.) I want to call everyone by a nickname but like you, resist with difficulty. In Ireland (Dublin really) we have an affectionate suffix, so I’d be Debzer, or a Moore would be Moorsey.
I like them all! Except Debs, I don’t understand that one. Why am I plural now? I am too literal.
Sorry for yaking so much.
Oooh! I love knowing about the affectionate suffixes – I definitely have been known to add a “-zer” to the end of part of Carla’s name.
Oooh, I love this topic.
My youngest is named T@llulah. When I was pregnant, I really wanted to call her Lulu. My husband calls her Louie. When she was about 3.5, she wanted to learn all the letters of her name so she insisted everyone call her by her given name (I am still unclear how that helps with spelling) and she’s almost 7. She wants to go by T@llulah in school, but is very happy to answer to lulu or Louie or lu or what her sisters call her – Loofin. I don’t even know.
My middle was a refluxy, weepy baby who needed to be upright after she ate. Her name is Alif@ir but I’d sing that “banana fana fo fair” song as we walked around the kitchen island. Then I Started calling her “Bo bear” which evolved to Bobo. I call her Bobo so much I have trouble thinking of her by her given name.
My oldest is a serious child who does not accept nicknames. Given name only.
I was the same. I’m a Melissa, never Missy.
Loofin – oh my goodness I love it. And BOBO! So cute!
When I was little, my mom was adamant I would never be called Nicki. If anyone tried to do so, they were shut down. It’s good, I’m totally not a Nicki. Some of my close friends call me Nic, though, which is fine. I call my husband by his nickname, which is just a shortened version of his name. I don’t think I’ve ever called him by his full name in his life. I also mostly call him Shmoopy or Moopie. My boys – one of them has a nickname that is also a shortened version of his name – are mostly called Lovey by me. Strangely, they are both fine with that. I also call them by their initials a lot.
Schmoopy – I love that! Very Seinfeldian.
I love nicknames too. And I love how they come about. We had two (nicknamed) Katies on our hall in college, and one became KT and the other became KatieB. We still call them and refer to them these ways.
My mom and sisters called/call me J, and I love it. My husband will sometimes call me that too along with other pet names. But he also uses my actual name. I especially appreciate that because I had a boyfriend just prior to dating my husband who only called me pet names. I didn’t even know it bugged me until my now-husband DIDN’T do that.
Also, my husband and both our boys are called by our last name often. And my husband and younger son are often called a nicknamed version of that given to them by separate friends! You may be surprised to know that it’s not really even confusing!
We call both of our sons and all our pets by So Many Names.
Oooh yes – having a previous (bad) experience with a nickname/nicknamer would certainly affect how it feels!
Growing up my mom refused to name the 5 of us anything that could be shortened. We all have names that are not easy to turn into a nickname, for example: no Edward, Ed, Eddie. So no nicknames, until my dad wrote my name and my brother’s name on a napkin for a waitress to sing happy birthday to us when I was turning 6. He has bad handwriting and I looked like a boy with my run amuck Dorothy Hamel hairdo. The waitress announced to everyone that we were singing to my brother and ERNIE. So, my nickname is Ernie. My dad called me that as a pet name when he was in a playful mood (he was grumpy a lot) and the other family at the restaurant STILL call me that. Otherwise no one calls me that.
My oldest two boys have names that can be shortened. We shortened one because the actual name sounds very formal, like Edward – so we call him Eddie, but I cringe when anyone calls him Ed. This is super rare but my mother in law called him Ed as a newborn and I about died. I told her he was Eddie. I do call my youngest son by his middle name a lot, because it comes out faster than his first name.
Coach gave all of his siblings nicknames that have stuck. His sister used to wear lycra pants for running and he called her Flo Jo after the runner, and we all still call her Flo.
What a funny origin story for your name!
I’m Lilly, which is not very nickname able. I refuse Lil and only one person used to call me Lils and we don’t speak now, so I’m just Lilly. My wife has a longer name with many available nicknames but she doesn’t use any of them. With each other, we mostly say “wife” or “dearest”, or, sometimes, Hector.
We also have 7 pet rats, who all get nicknamed. Most prominently, Mabb gets called Mabbitha Twitchett, Mabbit Rabbit, Bunny, and Fabulous Mabbulous.
Ha! I love how pets get so many nicknames!
My parents named me Kristen, intending to call me Kris—but then NEVER EVER EVER called me Kris. One set of my grandparents, however, had heard the “We’re calling her Kris” message loud and clear, and they thought Kristen was a bizarre name (they had never heard of it, which is funny to think of decades later), so they and that whole branch of the family called/call me Kris. Which I liked, but only from them—THOUGH INTERESTINGLY (to me) I’ve recently had a change of heart about that nickname and think I might actually like it from other people too.
In high school, some friends and I were talking about nicknames and how either our names didn’t have a nickname or else we didn’t like the available nickname (like, I don’t like to be called Kristy), and we were trying to be silly but ended up starting a real thing where we called each other by the second halves of our names plus a diminutive—like Stennie for Kristen. It’s weird to me that at first it sounded really awkward (like, WHO would EVER use such a ridiculous nickname??) and soon it sounded ABSOLUTELY NATURAL. A few people from that era still call me Stennie, but I would ONLY want those few to use it.
I love this topic.
I had one grad school friend who tried to refer to me as Zanne. No thank you, it sounded so weird… but I could also see how it could catch on.
I never really had a nickname; Kristi didn’t really lend itself to one. Then in middle school gym class our uniforms had our first initial and our last name – my best friend that time still calls me “KRogers” as in the grocery store. At 15 I became a big sister (half) and the littles (now 20 somethings) still call me “sissy” ~ that hard “K” is hard for toddlers so it was sweet and stuck.
Now my nieces and nephew call me “Sugar.” My parents also call me Sugar or Baby Girl. My husband never, ever calls me by my name – I’m muffin or sweetie muffin. Speaking of husband, his given name is David and the only person that calls him that is his mother. He’s Dave!
Outside of the office I almost never hear “Kristi” –
Sissy – that is darling!
Nicknames are a must! The weirder they are, the more you love the person 😅 so much husband is Bugs and my daughter is Spawn 😂
I was given a formal first name (but yet a shortened version of my grandmother’s name for the middle – who knows what that was about). I grew up with the shortened version of the first name but my dad, for some reason, called me Missy (nothing to do with my real name) and it ticked my mom off…perhaps that’s why he did it. But only he ever called me that and loved that he had his own special pet name for me.
For a time, after we first married, The Husband would call me Gigi or G (how he came up with that from my name is a reach but I was fine it – and now use it for the blog!).
When our son was small he would get SO mad if anyone shortened his name. It”s WXYZ! NOT WXY! But now that he’s grown he is fine with the shortened name. And, of course, acts like he is fine when I use any of the many nicknames for him that having nothing to do with his actual name.
Wendy doesn’t lend itself to many nicknames, although a few people called me Wen from time to time. I did, however, mess with the spelling of my name (hence my wendiwendy username) and spelled it Wendi from the age of 11 until I moved to a new state in 2014. Back in the day, you could be very casual with spelling on official documents (I think at one point I even had a social security card with Wendi on it!) but by 2014, your name had to match your birth certificate. It was such a pain that I just switched back to Wendy, startling all my childhood friends. 🙂
My kids, Eric and Paige, are not super nickname-friendly either but I do tend to call them ‘bunny’ a lot. Eric, though, is almost never know by his name. ALL of his friends, even his fiancee, call him Watson (last name). The only time I ever called him that was when I did a FB post saying we were going to visit him at his first apartment. They called it WTF Haus after the three roommates’ names (Watson, Tess, Faith) so I posted that I was visiting them (using those names) at WTF Haus. It was truly weird calling him by that nickname!
Stephany does lend itself to nicknames, but most people either use my full name or just shorten to Steph. My mom always uses my full name, but friends and some family will use Steph. I feel more like a Stephany than a Steph – I’ll even give out my full name when ordering food, lol.
My nephews are very nickname-y, though. We almost never call them by their full names – it’s always the shortened version or just their initial, haha.
We named our daughter, actually, because of the nickname — and had to debate which ‘formal’ name it would be short for. (Kate–it was either Katherine or Katelyn and we went w/Katelyn). When she was a toddler, everyone at her daycare called her Kate-Kate, including us. She gets mad if we use that now, esp. in front of her friends, but I ADORE it. Maybe because my own name, Lee, was not in anyway nickname-able, except for Lee-Lee, which some of my cousins still sometimes say.
My son was one of 6 Alexes (boys and girls) in his kindergarten class, so he became “T” for his last name, to the teachers. The kids, however, kept him as Alex-T, and they call him that to this day (they’re all 16 now).