names - spinoff

[luckylady]

Ok, I noticed a trend on the names thread and I am wondering about something - why do people choose a name only for their child to be called a nickname? Why not just name them the nickname then? I don't get this and I am genuinely curious about the thought behind it! My SIL did this with both kids - Madison - Maddie and Dylan James - DJ.

MY DD's name is Ellerie. I HATE when people ask me what we call her. HUH? we call her Ellerie LOL. Not Elle, or ellie, or ella - I don't get it!!! :

[ChattyCat]

Maybe they think the nickname is cute for a kid, but want a more grown up sounding name for later in life?

We call our son by his middle name. His whole middle name. Not a shortened version. He's named after my and dh's maternal grandfathers, and I didn't like the way the names sounded the other way. But, I knew I wanted to call him Emerson.

[katebleu]

i'm not a member of yours or any of the due date clubs, but i have a fascination with names so i always note if a name thread is up, and i have an opinion...

nicknames are given mostly to avoid confussion with others, usually family memebers with the same name. i was named after my grandmother, katherine. she used kitty as a nickname. my parents called me katie. it has becoome kate as i have aged. katherine is just as much my name, but kate or katie is what i am called.
my dd, like one of my younger brothers, goes by a diminutive of her middle name. her full name is anne lucille, but she goes by lucie. lucie is a name that i always liked. my great-grandmother's name was anne lucy. and lucille is dp's grandmother's name. everyone's happy.

i do think it's a bit rude to assume that your dc goes by a nickname though.

[dharmama]

Maybe they think the nickname is cute for a kid, but want a more grown up sounding name for later in life?

Our DD is Lilia but we mostly call her Lily or Lil. We the name Lily but wanted her to have a longer option to distinguish herself a bit since the name is climbing the popularity charts. DH also wanted her to have a more professional sounding option if she wanted it later in life. We considered Lilith and Lillian but Lilia felt just right.

Oh and also maybe we liked her having a knickname because neither DH or I had names that were knickname-friendly (Erin and John). I always wanted a knickname.... even tried to force my friends/family to call me Rinny for a while but it SO didn't work. :LOL

But....the names we have picked out for this baby stand alone.

[luckylady]

hmmm - interesting replies! I had never thought of that Katebleu!

[Happypants]

Erin, my name is Erin too and I also always wanted a nickname! But alas, never got one. Still don't have one.

To the op, I guess I can't really explain the though process per se, but I have a fascination with nicknames and I almost always call people towards whom I am affectionate by a shortened form of their names. To me, it's strange when there is an obvious shortened affectionate form of a name but the person is always called by their full name. :

[dshields]

I'm so with you happypants! I love nicknames...One of my favorite names is Francesca (or Frances) but it's hard to saddle a cute little one with such a mouthful. Two of my favorite literary characters have been called "Franny" so that's what we'd do.

I can't name my baby a name that does not have a sweet diminutive form. Dh and I both are huge into nicknames. He actually makes up weird ones not even related to the real name: my name is Danielle, he's called me "Danto" He calls our dog Babe "noodle" and that's morphed into "Mrs. Noodahles" and "scroodle". We never get called our real names unless we're in trouble!

[luckylady]

LOL at not calling your real names unless you are in trouble. How interesting! I just really wondered about this.

My DD's best friend is Francesca - and her mom is like me and FREAKS out when people call her Frankie, or Franny. LOL.

OK, I do call DD my little Monkey.

[katebleu]

Originally Posted by luckylady

My DD's best friend is Francesca - and her mom is like me and FREAKS out when people call her Frankie, or Franny. LOL.

there are actually names i love that will probably ended up on future not to be used lists because i'm not super keen on there nicknames. i like regina but not reggie or gina. i love rosalind but not roz. although i do have some ideas for both.

thanks for including me.

[zaksma]

Well, I'm not big on nicknames or shortened names (I never call my Zachary "Zack") but I do want to honor my dh's great-grandmother by naming our little girl (if we have one) Evelyn- but honestly, I can't see looking at a baby and calling her Evelyn so she will be Evie. Then, if she wants to be Evelyn later in life, she can choose that for herself and not alwasy be Evie.

[boingo82]

I think it does keep the options open for the kid - that way they get the cutesy name when they're little, but are not stuck putting a cutesy 3-year-old type name on their application for operations manager.
I mean, if you're going to be called "Bitsy" regardless, it's probably better to have "Elizabeth" as a backup rather than "Bitsy" as your full name.

[Peppamint]

I dunno why, but we love and use nicknames all the time. Ds is named in memory of my brother and FIL and Jeremy doesn't have any obvious nickname so he gets called Jer or Bubby a lot.

It's a sign of affection for us. After all, instead of being called Michelle or Shelly these days I get called Turdley by my hubby because my mom told him her birth story where the nurse said I was only a bowel movement.

[Bkwyrm]

I used to babysit a Francesca who was called "Chessie" for short, which I liked.

One of the names on our list is "John," which is my husband's uncle's name. We'll call the baby Jack, if we name it John, to avoid confusion. I'm the....fourth? Catherine in my family, so I've been nicknamed all my life!

[nitareality]

It was important to us to honor a family name. We never ever intended on calling our son by his full name, it was going to by Ty as a nickname, but he's just turned out to be such a Thaddeus! :LOL Additionally my two other children are children we adopted as children, not toddlers. We didn't get to choose their names, and so we go with the obvious Steph for Stephanie and Var for Servario.

[KellyandKatie]

Lol

I am LOL reading this becuase my DH family is really insain about nick names. They all have very italian names, like my DH is Santino, but everyone calls him Sonny (?) and BIL is Rosserio Antonio but we call him Tony (?) BIL Micheal Josheph is Joey those are spin offs of their middle names.
SO! When we both came up with Katie first, we had to deside if her proper name was kathleen or Katherine ( we went with Kathleen Monet)
This baby will be Arcelia if she is a girl, Gabriel if a boy and if we have a hermaphrodite or multiples we also have a list for those possibilites( back when i worked I worked with a lot of hermaphodite babies, it happens more than people think, I dont want our baby to think we were thrown a curve if we are blessed with a hermaphrodite baby) same thing with multiplies, I want our babies to know we were waiting for as we get)
ANYWAY
Arcelia will be called Arcy and Gabriel will be Gabe.
I have no idea why we do nicknames

[boingo82]

Originally Posted by KellyandKatie

... back when i worked I worked with a lot of hermaphodite babies, it happens more than people think, I dont want our baby to think we were thrown a curve if we are blessed with a hermaphrodite baby) ..

My former coworker's WORST FEAR when she was pg was that she have a hermaphrodite baby. To her this was worse than myriad crippling health problems that could happen. To me - well, I guess I would worry about the struggles my child would face if they were intersexed, but it is not really a fear for me at all. I've watched enough DSC and TLC shows on it that I know we would avoid any surgery and let the child choose his or her gender (gosh we could use some non-gender-specific pronouns huh?) in the same way that I would not be at all disappointed if DS were gay.

[fiacre]

I'm not sure exactly what camp I fall into. Neither of my children have particularly nick-name friendly names - Cadence and Athan. My grandmother is the only one who calls my dd Cady and I insist that she spell it that way so its reminiscent of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Luckily though, my gma is the only one who has tried to nickname her. When she was born, the nurses kept asking what we'd call her for short, like two syllables was too much or something. That sorta left a bad taste in my mouth. As for me, I have an unusual compound name which as a kid I hated and thus abbreviated, and now really don't mind and have settled into a nickname, though it's not what I was called as a kid - go figure!

Anyway, none of the names I'm thinking of for this critter are particularly nickname friendly either, so at least I'm consistent - Milo, Jude, Eden, Brynne (dh hates the last two) - we'll see!!

[Vanessa]

We named our son Quinton, but we usually call him Quinn. DH loved the name Quinn and I loved the name Quinton. I think that's fairly normal, though. My dh's name is Matthew but he goes by Matt a lot.

Haven't exactly decided on names for the new baby, but most of them have nicknames.

[ChattyCat]

Ok, so my mom's visiting, and she asked the exact opposite question. My sis plans on naming her daughter Carrie, not Carol, Caroline, Carolyn, Carolina, etc. My mom was annoyed with people who give their kids nicknames, but not the full name. She even started complaining about Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, who I guess named their kids Gracie and Maggie, not Grace and Margaret. This coming from a woman who named her daughters Christine and Catherine, and neither of us has EVER gone by our full name. Go figure!

[alexisyael]

I definitely am picking names somewhat based on the need to have many nickname possibilities. (Not just one, but multiple... like my name: Alexis can become Lex, Lexie, Alex, Alexa. Most people call me Alexis, but lots of friends call me Lexie, at least part of the time. My DH calls me Lexie, Lex and Alexis. I love all those variations).

My dh, however, is called his nickname almost exclusively. I am the only one who calls him anything different, except for the occasional people who use his full name. And the very rare people who use the diminuitive form of his nickname (which he HATES!) He does go by his full name professionally (for papers and such), however, people who know him use his nickname.

I want my child to have multiple nicknames, because to me they're a sign of affection. His one plain nickname (which is really his full name) isn't really. That's why I had to invent extra nicknames for him! (He actually has extra nicknames for me as well, too. We both like nicknames).

Off topic -- it's interesting to me that other mamas also have plans about what they would do if they were blessed with an intersexed baby. I do, too. Same as Boingo. I think I tend to like gender-neutral names for that reason... tho maybe it's because my name is a gender-neutral name, and I've always liked that!)