A rose by any other (nick) name…

Over the years, Christi and I have had our share of difficulties in choosing names for the babies. We have our rule that we don’t use the same letter of the alphabet twice, plus we try really hard not to pick overly common names. Furthermore, although we don’t have anything against them, we don’t have any urge to use any of the more traditional biblical names. So you can see how we might have a bit of trouble thinking up names. When it comes to nicknames, however, anything goes.

It probably started for Jessica when her Grandma started calling her Tootsieroll because of her fondness for the candy. Christi and I didn’t really use that one though, we usually called her Jessy or Messy Jessy. Then one day, because of something she said, and I don’t remember exactly how it came about, we started calling Guss me (she had said something like, “It’s guss me, Jessica”) The one that has stuck though, has been Gussa. Her little brothers and sisters almost always said her name that way before they could speak well, calling her both Gussa and Gussica at one point or another. So Gussa has stuck, so much so, that I have her in my cell phone as Gussa.

Chad has gone through Chaddy, to Chaddy pooh, Paddy and Paddy pooh. Pretty much always something like that. There was however, a period when he was going through that grumpy teenager stage when we (mostly me) called him “Sunshine” or sometimes “Captain Sunshine”. I still call him Sunshine when he’s in a mood, but Paddy pooh is the one that has really stuck around. I even went into our cell phone account and fixed it so that his caller ID shows up as Paddy. If you doubt me, have him call you, you’ll see.

Dalton’s nickname…well I’m not sure where it came from. We started out just calling him Dalton-man, and we used to sing his name in that song by They Might Be Giants called Particle Man. We used that for a pretty good while, and Austin still calls him that, but then it somehow changed to Schmoo. I’m not really sure where we got it, but we began calling him variously, Dalton Schmoo and just Schmoo. His cell phone has the same set up as Chad’s, when he calls, you get Schmoo Cason. I’m hilarious like that.

Austin’s nickname was just a total case of being silly but having nothing clever to call him, we just rhymed our way to “Austin Bostin Schlostin. We use variations on that and add in other rhyming words. Trouble with this nickname is it’s kind of hard to say in an angry way, so you can’t really use it to yell at him with. AUSTIN BOSTIN SCHLOSTIN!! Just doesn’t have the right angry ring to it, know what I mean?

Bailey’s nickname probably came from the song “American Pie”, by Don McClean, even though Christi can’t recall for sure. But for as long as I can recall, we’ve called her Bailey Pie, or sometimes Pee Pot Pie, Po Po Pie or something else involving Pie. She is our little Pie. She too got the cell phone treatment.

Gage got his nickname as a direct result of his personality. When he was little and his personality traits started to become more evident, Christi and I used to say he had a little attitude. A Gage-itude, if you will. Well that morphed into Gagey-tooty, Tooty-booty, Gagey-booty and so on. We both still call him booty. And he still has a Gage-itude. It fits him as well today as it did when we came up with it.

Kaylee is our little “Cookie”. I’m not entirely sure how we got to calling her that, but over the years she’s been, Cookie-snookie, Cookie-frookie, and whatever other silly, cutesy things that we could think of. Hers is also one that has stood the test of time and she is still my sweet Cookie Rae (Rae is Christi’s middle name too).

Harper has gone through a whole bunch of nicknames over the years because we really had trouble coming up with anything really cutesy that rhymes or really fits well with her given name. We have at times called her Harpity, Harpity-Barpity, Harper-Barper but what we seem to always come back to is Harpy. It’s not very clever and it doesn’t have any real special or secret meaning, but it’s what we call our sweet little Harpy.

Emma has really had a lot of variations of her nickname such as Emma-memma, Meema-leema, Memma-lemma and when she’s in trouble, we fall back on her first and middle names: EMMA VEE!!

As they get younger, they obviously have had less time to develop multiple nicknames which is the case with Rebekah. One thing about her name is that we really didn’t want her to end up with the nickname “Becky” and one of Christi’s friends told her that as long as we never call her that, she won’t use it, therefore neither will others. We have pretty much always called her Bekah or Beeky-boo and that’s pretty much it. If you knew her, you’d realize it’s a pretty good fit. She is absolutely a Beeky-boo.

Trevor has always been our Bubbs. That’s pretty much it for him other than rhyming it by adding Chubbs to it. I just call him “My Bubbs, My CHUBBS!!” Sometimes a little variation like “Chubbsy-Bubbsy” but really mostly just Bubbs. I usually yell that at him as he’s coming up the drive from his bus. He’s the only one that takes a bus because he goes to a special class for the hearing impaired.

Walker went through being called “Wockitty, Woo-kitty, Walker Woo and now he’s just Mr Woo Tee. How we got to Woo Tee, I’m not sure, but he’s completely owned that one as he even calls himself by his nickname. Sometimes we’ll ask him “who is it? And he’ll say it’s me, Woo-Tee!” He is such a big little man!

Morgan has a couple of active nicknames. We usually call him Dee-Dee, which is short for when we call him Morgan Dee-Dee, which is sometimes Mogen Dee-Dee. We’re not really sure what started that one, but his other major nickname came because he looks EXACTLY like Dalton when he was that age, therefore we call him Schmoo-2 or sometimes little Schmoo. Not only does he look like him, but he acts just like him as well.

We somehow got started calling Laura, Lola Falana, after the singer from the 60s and 70s. Mostly just because it amused us, but we used that for a long time. That one has kind of morphed into calling her Lolee-lo and I also like to call her Gogly-Gogly because that was something she used to go around saying all the time. She could have picked that up anywhere because she is probably the biggest parrot of all our kids.

Which brings us finally to Sawyer. We started calling him Soy Bean even before he was born, because we knew if it was a boy, we were gonna name him Sawyer Benjamin. Christi’s favorite is to call him Soy Sauce and I usually call him Little Man. Sawyer-boyer also makes the rounds as his nickname at times.

I have to say, with all the nicknames and variations thereof that we have used over the years, it’s a wonder that any of our kids ever learn what their real names are. With that and our penchant for talking babytalk, I marvel that they can even speak English as well as they do.

I wonder what sort of nickname number 16 will inspire.