Nick naming Nick names

4

January 29, 2013 by rebeccaannemarshall

“…and then I grew up… never really knowing what my REAL name was….”

NICK NAMES!! We all have one, or two, maybe more. All of our friends have one as well, whether we know of them or not, and our children most DEFIANTLY defiantly have nick names. I might also add that, if you are like me, they may have many! My girls have so many nicknames, some obvious as to were they can from, some not so much. It is always an abundance of fun running through the steps that led to one of their nick names with someone who is curious enough to ask were it came from. In today’s post I will be discussing some of their nick names. You may find as you read that you are much like me in terms of the quantity of nick names for your children as well as they stories behind them. Have you ever had to go into sort-of-long-detail about why you call your children the names you call them? It is funny how parents find themselves going through nick name after nick name, and then nicknaming that nick name, until they find themselves with one (or a few) that sticks, now having a novels worth of a back story to explain them.

Here are some examples of nick names, after which I will go through the steps with you of how they got to where they are.

Isabella → Reena

Jade → Mammy

Chelsie → Reeno

And a general nick name that I often call all of them → Boobie

They all have many more nick names and to walk you through how these came to be I will be covering some of them. So here goes, are you ready?

Reena

Lets start with Isabella. Sweet little Isabella who was quickly nick named Belly or Bella. Those don’t really need much in the way of explaining as I am sure it is obvious where they came from. It is from Bella that we jump straight to her next nick name, Bellarina. The attempt behind this one was to have it sound like Ballerina, the beautiful graceful dancers, cleverly switching it up and adding Bella in the spot of Balle… see what we did there? Yep, pretty creative. As our Belly/Bella/Bellarina grew, got older, and began talking and picking up words, we noticed that in attempts to say her name (or what she thought was her name because we always called her by it) that she was calling herself Reena. We realized that she had just nick named herself simply because the word Bellarina was just too large and complicated for a tiny one just learning how to speak. Now that she is 3 and speaking well she still prefers to call her self Reena, her most common nick name next to Belly.

Mae-Mae

Jade. Her name including hyphenated first name and middle name is Jade-Mackenzie Mae, Mae obviously being her middle name. For whatever reason in the nick naming process we skipped the 2nd first name entirely and went straight to Jadey-Mae. From there we decide, ah what the heck, scrap the first name altogether, yea we are so good at this! She then became Mae-Mae. From there we played on the sound of this nick name, the two m`s, and basically just started calling her mam which. Due to the Parent’s Law of the eee’s (which will be explained later on), it turned into Mammy. This can sometimes turn into Mammy-Jammy (because rhyming is taught in nick naming 101) and Mammy-nutes (don’t ask about that one I really have no explanation).

Reeno

Now on to Chelsie. Chelsie’s nick names have a little less in terms of sense making. From baby baby she was always Butt, strange, and not sure why but Butt she was. At some point, luckily for her, something inside my head told me that Bug was a more suitable nick name. She was so tiny at 4.8lbs when she came home from the hospital, already 3 months old by then, and when she was wrapped up and snugly warm she really did remind me of that saying “as snug as a bug in a rug.” She was just so small in her blanket, like a little bug wrapped up in a large rug. At some point in her toddler years she developed the nick name Chelsary which then from there it was simply added onto and making it Chelsaryno (Chels-a-reeno). Finally, it was then shorted back down to just Reeno. For a while we exercised our nick naming brains by switching it to Rony, which then was shorted to just Ron, until we found it to hard to explain to people that our beautiful little girl had a boys nick name, and we quickly scrapped that idea. Reeno seemed to eventually fall off the nick name wagon, just occasionally used, until again our Belly started talking and she began calling her by that nick name. So now Chels is back to Reeno once more.

As a side note on that, Jeff thought it would be a good nick name for Jade to call her Renal, in pattern with Reeno and Reena and also because Jade had her Kidney problems (you know renal glad, oh Jeff you are sooooooo clever!) Needless to say the nick name Renal was quick to be thrown out the window… and then stomped on … and then buried deep deep into the ground. Which I am sure Jeff would have liked to do with this next nick name for all the girls. Boobie. (This one was allowed to stay because I said so)

The Boobies

Belly has a nick name from her Uncle that is Belly-Boo and from that sprung my calling her Belly-boo-boo, from that just boo-boo at times (a fairly common nick name I would imagine) and from there Boo-boo’s just seemed to be what I called all the girls on a regular basis. It was then that I nick named the nick name of that nick name by simply shortening it to Boob. I know, drop the two o’s, good thinking! From there it turned into Boobie, because all parents like to put eee’s at the end of the things they say when they are baby talking to their children. (This is the Parents Law of eee’s I had mentioned earlier.) “Aw does my little cutie boobie baby want to take a nappy? Take your sippy and your blankie and go to beddy by? No? What would make you happy, a snacky? Go for a walky? Wanna talky on the phone with auntie? Play with dollies? Wanna helpie mama bakie some cookies?” OK so some of those naturally just end in eee`s, but you get the point. I try not to call my children this nick name when I have people around after finding myself singing “Oh my boobies, all my tiny little boobies, I love my boobies!!” to the girls when I was on the phone with my sister. She was happy for me that I was so content with the size of my breast, but it was then that I decided that I would have to be extra careful of the things I said when using that particular nickname for my children.

So you see, just because your child has a nick name that dose not make sense to others does not mean that there is not a ridiculously long and reasonable explanation for why they have it! I seriously hope I am not alone in this! What nick names do your kids have? Do they come with an explanation of how they got it? I would love to know I am not the only one so please share in the comments!

Until Saturday! Tata!

Becky A.M.

Isabella – Belly, Bella, Bellarina, Belly-boo, Reena, Reenie, Reenie-balinie, Boobie

Jade – Jadey-Mae, Jay-Mack, Mae-Mae, Mammy, Mammy-nutes, Ma-nutes, Boobie

Chelsie– Chelsie-bug, Chelsary-Reeno, Reeno, Ronny (OK so sometimes we still call her that), Cheezle (I didn’t previously mention this one because it has absolutely no explanation), Cezem (Chelsie-Elizabeth Zoe Elieen Marshall) Boobie

My girls are going to hate me when they get older aren’t they……