Josie is nearly three months old and we still don’t have any kind of consistent name for the little fucker. We don’t even have a nickname. Or more accurately, we have, like, 237 different nicknames.
It will go without saying that we spent months debating an official name, with my wife continually rejecting my well-intentioned nominations. (Example: Irvinga! A feminized tribute to my beloved grandfather Irving. Original. Poetic. Overruled.) We looked long and hard at the name Peanut Almond, which we thought would be incredibly edgy and cool. In the end, though, we couldn’t pull the trigger. There were concerns that we might be cut out of various wills. Also: that our daughter might murder us when she hit junior high.
In the end, we settled on Josephine Colette, which we know sounds sort of Frenchy, but has a nice lilt to it, and a certain old school sangfroid, and also manages to avoid the trendy name trap (i.e. Madison, Sophie, Olivia). But the truth is, now that she’s among us, we almost never call her Josie or Jo or even JoCo.
We call her “Tuntle” and “Jellybean” and “Miss Pink Megink.”
These names just keep generating themselves, based on various free associative riffs that tend to go along with early parenting. Thus we proceed from Milkface to Milkface McGoo to Goo to Gooface to Gooface Killah. And from Lambchop to Porkchop to Pooks to Pooksville to Last Train to Pooksville to Francis Ford Pookola. It just doesn’t end. There’s a new one every day, sometimes more than one. And we switch back and forth incessantly. Which is fine, right? Except that at a certain point the kid is going to get totally confused. She’s gonna be like DeNiro in Taxi Driver: You talkin to me?
I guess we’ll need to keep her away from firearms.
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It’s totally ok. I love the mutating nickname thing. When I was a baby I was Stump (becasue I had stumpy legs), then Stump America, Americola, Americola Astridola, Americola Vespucilator, Vaspucilectomy. My little sister’s nicknames morphed until she was Oogabindalation.
My twin lads definitely have an imbalance on the nickname front. Porter has become Portobello, Port-o-Prince, Porto Cooper, Portcullis, and about 28 more. Poor Miles just gets Milosz, the name of a writer I’ve never read.
I can’t seem to stick to one either.
Hence: Doodlebug, Doodles, Baby Doo, Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo, Punkin, Punkerdoodles, Superfuss, A.C. Fuss n’ Stuff, Princess Fussalot of Fussalonia, Babyloo, LuLu, Toots, Poops, SuperPooper…
Yeah, Milkface, along with Little Face, Babygirl (how ingenious), Grumpy Pants. Her name is Izabel, so for awhile it was Izi Lou Who, IziLou, Little Who. Now that she’s a big girl (3 mo.), it’s just Iz.
I hear ya. We call my daugher The Cuff (as if it is her gang name or something) all because I had to cuff her pants one day. This is cuffed up because too cuffed, and was thu shortened to The Cuff. Love when I called her that in preschool yesterday. No, I’m ok. Really.
The name thing has gotten to be so crazy that there is actually a spread in his baby book that says “My Name is…” with all the different variations each family member has for him. Believe it or not though -after almost 2 years of him being called almost everything BUT his own name -he does know his real name! As well as Boomp, Nub, Admiral Fussybottom, Pumpkin and a host of others.
His name is Robert(after me and my father and both grandfathers). He is the fourth so we nicknamed him Quattro. He is called the little man, the little guy, guy, Guy Lafleur (Pro hockey star), Rueben (as in he’s reuben his eyes b/c he’s tired)….The pediatrician wanted us to settle on a name for his own good. We all have dozens of nicknames. It’s part of our familial tradition!
Welcome to the world of parenting, Steve–it’s great to see you here!
This little family can relate to everything you’ve written so far, from the agony of the bad latch, the careening between tedium and ecstasy, to the ever-evolving nickname parade.
Our guy T has morphed from taquito to T-tunes to Misto Pants to Bumblenose to, these days, either Bear or Mr. T or Pookieboo.
The adventures will just keep coming. Can’t wait to read the next installment about yours.
I have the same problem with my 9 month old. Babs, Babu, Boops, Bobo. His name is Devin so I have no clue where those came from but I use them all the time. I’m just worried he’s never going to learn his real name!
And my hubby insists on calling him all sorts of unpleasant things like turd bucket, fart knocker (??), and others I care not to repeat as I’m sure they’d lead to social services knocking on our door.
Well our oldest is Pasquale. I hate the name but it’s an Italian tradition to name the first born son after the father’s father. We tried to come up with nicknames but nothing seemed to fit. So we just call him by the whole thing.
Our middle child is MarcAnthony. He has a combination name. Marc after my step-dad and Anthony after my BIL. Pasquale was only 18 months old and couldn’t say MarcAnthony so it came our Monkey. Needless to say he is still Monkey and at preschool refuses to answer to anything but.
Our dear little girl is Antoinette. The boys call her Internet. My mom calls her Net-Net. My husband calls her Tonetta. I call her Annette, Net…the list is long.
So the point is, the only child I have that uses their own name is the one whose name I don’t like. Go figure
Our daughter has tons of names: Emi-loo, Emi-la, Emi-low, Minkey Boodle (thanks Brak!) and most recently Bipto-Opto. Can’t explain where they come from but they all seem to fit her.
I worry that she won’t know her name or will only associate it with the word No (“No Emily, the trash can is gross. No Emily, don’t play in the dog water.”)
Someone once told me that the more names a thing has, the more important it is to you (re: the old saw about Eskimos having a thousand words for snow or somesuch).
Our daughter has roughly 34 billion names, few of which resember her actual name. Same with the cat. Everyone is loved in our house!!
Hah!
So far, we’ve got Little Slug, Little Man, Little Man Face, Little Guy, Sir Poops A Lot, Baby Guy, Buddy, You, Honey, Sweetie, Sweetheart, and, in the mornings: “You’ve got FEET! You’ve got TOES! You’ve got (INSERT BODY PART HERE)!”
I think it is something that keeps our brains going a tad, in reaction to whatever the kids do that moment. Whenever my son gives me specific directions, I tend to say, “Okay, Mr Cruise Director.”
And yeah, I did get a warm-up for this with my pets. I can’t even tell you how many names they have…
HA… our Lena is Lena Bean, Leana Beana, Lena McBean, Sunshine Princess, Punkingirl, Da Baby….. yup…. (My sister’s twins are now called Hannapin Station and Reina Prefontaina.)
now that jules is 8 months i do try to get in her real name here and there so i can see if she knows it. but i forget and quickly descend into the never ending spiral of names
conseetomebiom
that’s one of the latest.
our housekeeper/nanny says something to her in spanish that has something like the above in it but not that close to it and i like how her voice sounds saying it so i’ve taken the sound and anglacized it and added some m to it.
when i say names now of several months ago, i don’t love them. preciosa just doesn’t work even those she’s more precious than ever.
why say preciosa or mama linda or even the banal julsie when i can say
consitomebiom?
i can’t stop saying it.
zulama must think i’m crazy.
We call our son boogy. I love it. I think he loves it too expecially when i sing “boogy boogy boo” to him. He smiles and immediatly knows im talking to him.
I know you may find this to be off-subject, but I was reading through Time, and I found the article against the so-called “hipster parent” way of life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an anti-hipster, my husband and I both have blogs on our pregnancy and parenting issues. While I was reading this, I noticed that the author mentioned that you called your daughter “the little fucker” on one occasion.
Here’s what I’m wondering: do you think that possibly someday in the future, your daughter is going to read that, and it might possibly hurt her feelings? My husband and I talked about it, and he doesn’t think it’s a huge deal, because it’s not meant to be taken really seriously, children of good parents KNOW their parents love them unconditionally, and who knows if it’ll even be around when the child is old enough to read it.
I feel slightly different however. I think that if I were a teenager, and I came across something of my parents where they called me names similar to that, it would probably hurt my feelings. I was a little bit more sensitive than the rest at that age.
I’m not disagreeing with you at all, you are entitled to write/say whatever you like. I’m just wondering if you’ve thought about what might happen in the future?