Monday, September 23, 2013

A rose by any other name...


Here on my blog, I tend to refer to my family members either with nicknames or just by relationship. As you know, according to my short legend to the right, my son is Sonshine and sometimes Marching Band Boy on this blog, but in real life I also call him Sonshine,  Bubba, Baby Boy, ocassionally Brass Head, and of course by his name. Hubby is generally referred to as DH here, but I call him babe or by his name in real life. The girls, too, have pet names, namely baby girl or XXXXX Lady for the oldest and baby girl or XXXXX Love for the youngest. The call me various things too. Mostly Mom, or Momma, sometimes Mama-san, Wife Unit. And every once in a while I still get called Mommy.

My full given name is Jennie Linn, after the Swedish singer. These days, you probably know me just as Jen. DH has a sister named Jenny, so when we got married, obviously having a Jenny and a Jennie was going to be a bit confusing. Mostly DH was already calling me Jen, so switching to it on a permanent/regular basis was not an issue.

Now the whole original idea for today's post came from a conversation I had with Sonshine. I was telling him that I never thought his dad and I would have ever named him what we did.

You see, back in high school, I knew a kid named ... And he had a crush on me, was a grade or two  behind me, and I found him just generally annoying. And you know how once you have a bad experience with a person, you tend to shy away from that name--especially when naming your children (or your book characters). I'm not saying the experience was awful and terrible and bad things happened with that boy, but I never would have thought I'd have named my own child that name.

But seventeen, almost, eighteen years later and, you know, I really couldn't can't imagine my son with any other name, though I suppose I'd probably love him just as much!

Do you have nicknames for the special people in your life or an interesting story about a name?? I'd love to hear it.


4 comments:

Regina Richards said...

When the kids were toddlers I still called my husband by his real name. But hearing me say it, they started calling him by his name rather than calling him Daddy.

So to set an example I started calling my husband Daddy and the kids switched as well, which made my husband happy. Now the kids are grown and I'm learning to call my husband by his actual name again. :)

Jen FitzGerald said...

That's great, Regina!

I had friends whose youngest called them by their given names for a while even though the older ones called them Mom/my and Dad/dy.

Unknown said...

We don't really do nicknames in my family, but my friends and I use them frequently. My name doesn't really lend itself to shortening, but I always have fun making up a nickname for someone else!

Char Newcomb said...

Good post, Jen!