what do you call your known donor?

[elspethpaisley]

How do you/your little ones refer to your KD? Do you ever identify him as a "dad"? As "Uncle"? "Bio-dad"? Do you just call him by his first name? Some other term? As my partner and I and our KD think things through and work out our agreements, I'm curious how others have dealt with this.  I would like to figure out how we'll refer to him, in terms of his relationship to our future children. He will not be co-parenting with us, but will be involved in our lives on a regular basis (we all live in intentional community together, so see him just about every day, and everyone in the community will know of our relationship with him). I think it would feel weird to me to identify him as an "uncle" when that's not the actual biological relationship, but it would be nice to have some special title for him that's sort of along those lines. Any suggestions?

[seraf]

We call DDs KD by his first name.  He's a friend who we see several times a year (love the whole family) but isn't involved in daily life.

I don't know where you're from, but around here Aunt and Uncle are frequently used for very close friends, despite biology.  I think Dad is more of a social relationship. 

[KSDoulaMama]

We call him by his first name or occasionally "Uncle _____." That being said, we call a lot of our close friends uncle and aunt to her. KD and our daughter have only met each other once at this point, though, and since he now lives overseas there isn't much opportunity.

[gumshoegirl007]

We didn't come up with an actual name that worked for us until after the baby was born.  DW and I had referred to our KD as the donor daddy throughout the process.  On the day her met her, the day after she was born, we settled on calling him DD.  This is an abbreviation for donor daddy which has now morphed into Dee Dee.  We like it cause it's special and unique and if asked the origins I think it helps those who are close to us understand a bit better. 

[RStelle]

I have been wondering about this too. Him and his partner are both an important part of our family. I liked Dee Dee but I told it to my wife and she said it sounded like a name for a grandma. Maybe a name will just evolve.

The thing that I am really having a hard time with is what to call him to other people. Like one time I introduced him as "this is Mike, he gave us sperm". And then I was like, "oh sorry, that sounded rude". 'Sperm donor' doesn't really cover it, but a lot of times people call him the dad, and I definitely don't like that!

[elspethpaisley]

Thanks for sharing! I didn't grow up calling close friends Uncle or Aunt, but DP and KD both did, so maybe that's what we'll end up doing after all. I'm sure lots of people (people we live with, who probably should know better...) will be referring to him as the dad, and I imagine it'll be hard to navigate finding an acceptable alternative term that carries the correct social meaning. I also feel that "sperm donor" is pretty clinical and doesn't cover our whole relationship.

[quantumleap]

We call our donor, Donor (his name). I don't know if we would have called him that if his name didn't flow so well with donor, but it does. We also sometimes just call him by his name. DD is not quite three, and still doesn't seem to understand the whole concept. It'll be interesting to see how things develop with time.

[darthtunaqueen]

We currently call our donor "BD", Baby Daddy.  He wants to be known as Aunty____.  We gave him free reign to pick his title, because we honestly didn't care (if he wanted to be "dad", we would've let him, but he doesn't want to be the parent, he just wants to sugar them up, play with them and hand them back).  

[pleasantlyfurious]

We also use uncle - but our KD is DP's brother, so it actually makes sense for our family structure.  We don't usually specify that he's the donor, but are open about it. 

[hippiemombian]

I don't have a KD, but DP and I thought about going that route. We would have called him by his first name.