“ker-dole” - “Tadpole”
“Monster”
“little terror”
“Rugrat”
“Jin-Long” - “Gold dragon” - because of his hair
One day my (then) girlfriend and I were tramping up a river which had a little waterfall that I wanted to show her. We swam in the pool, and then I took my shirt off and put it on a rock to dry.
“Daaa-vid!”
She was sitting butt naked on a rock under the waterfall, with an enormous grin on her face.
“Yeah, just a sec” I said, and went back to straightening out the shirt.
“Daaa-vid!”
I looked. There, sitting on her thigh and looking very comfortable and at peace, was a large frog. “Nice frog,” I said.
“What?” She looked down. “AAAAARGH!” She dove wildly to the left while the panicked frog leapt as hard as he could to the right…
Kips (after Kipper),
or (and only sometimes) Chibbles.[/quote]
Just wanna be clearer on the Kipper, comes from the phrase “giddy kipper” (Lancashire, UK - northern dialect for someone who gets overly excited).
Our oldest is “BB” - based on a shortened version his mispronounced English name. I also call him “Big Man!” (has to be said with a big booming voice) once in a while.
Our second was originally “chubalina” because she was so chubby. She has grown out of that and is now either “mei-mei”, peanut or some combination of her actual name with mei-mei or peanut. My wife calls her “ni-ni” as a version of mei-mei.
Some friends of ours - American husband and Taiwanese wife call their two daughters “Mango” and “Guava”. Not sure why. Mango apparently sounds OK in either Taiwanese or Chinese but my wife says “Guava” doesn’t work in Chinese or Taiwanese (especially for a girl). Anyway, to each his own.
When she was 1 drew a picture of a kid on the wall (with my most expensive art pen) and called it “koyee” so it was kinda catchy so we started calling her that, and later added our last name 葛 (Gé) so we call her Gé Koyee, is just kid babbling, I hope is not something offensive.
Perhaps you are not an inventive type when it comes to language, but you will find, should you ask around, that many people give their children nicknames over the years of their development. Children seem to enjoy the special relationships having these nicknames foster. I have a series of names for my sisters children. They include:
The vanilla monster.
Doris Flintstone.
Little moo.
Moo bag.
Pedro Jackie.
Aubrey and his gang.
Dot.
Dotster.
Buster cricklepants.
Jumpy La Rue.
The face.
Two meals.
In return they spend time thinking up new names for me to be called. Bunkle is the one that has stuck the longest, to the point where the youngest child actually thinks it is my real name.
Perhaps you are not an inventive type when it comes to language, but you will find, should you ask around, that many people give their children nicknames over the years of their development. Children seem to enjoy the special relationships having these nicknames foster.[/quote]
Nope. I simply have never enjoyed other people calling me by something that wasn’t my name (in high school they used my first surname because my name was pretty common). The only exception to that was my grandmother, and I tolerated that because it was her, but it embarrassed the hell out of me. I don’t mind a shorter version of the name (or surname), though, since that’s how we usually did things at home.
When I had to chose a name for my daughter, I looked for one that could be easily pronounced both in catalan and mandarin chinese because those are the main languages we use with her, and I didn’t want to be changing names constantly as people in Taiwan do. I also chose a short version of her name instead of the long one, to avoid shortening or changing it.
Maybe sounds too serious for some people? Maybe. I consider to have a special relationship with my parents (specially my father) and I’ve always called them “father” (not “dad” or “daddy”), and “mother” (not “mum”, “mama”, or “mommy”). It’s all about respect, and I don’t think any less of my parents for setting boundaries to familiarity. They’re my parents, not the dudes I hang out with, so I treat them with respect and they do the same with me, but that doesn’t mind that we can’t play together rolling on the park’s mud, sit together in the sofa for storytime (with my father), at the table for drawing (with my mother) or hang around the kitchen, helping to cook tasty food (both of them).
[quote=“Blaquesmith”]
Nope. I simply have never enjoyed other people calling me by something that wasn’t my name (in high school they used my first surname because my name was pretty common). The only exception to that was my grandmother, and I tolerated that because it was her, but it embarrassed the hell out of me. I don’t mind a shorter version of the name (or surname), though, since that’s how we usually did things at home.[/quote]
Do you think your children would enjoy nicknames though?