We spend months dreaming of the future name of our growing baby and then they’re here….they’re beautiful and that sweet name that you pined over for months, potentially fought over for months, turns into a nickname…like “Hippo.”  We thought it would be fun to share how your AMB team’s kiddos names evolved into interesting nicknames.

Caroline's Three-Week Update

 

Birth Name: Caroline Grace

Nicknames: When Matt and I were brainstorming names for our little bundle, we wanted a name that could not be butchered like Jacqueline to Jackie or like Matthew to Matt.  We thought we were pretty safe with Caroline as Car and Oline are not nicknames I’ve heard before.  Little did we know that we would have more nicknames for her than we could have anticipated. It probably took the kid longer to learn her name because of all of the mixed messages she was getting.  When she was a baby, we called her “hippo” because she was such an aggressive eater…that turned into “hip.”  Then we started calling her “boobooshki” where that came from I’ll never know…that turned into “boo” or “boo boo.” Then we started calling her “Care” and we still do but it’s also evolved to “care bear” or “care care.” Other nicknames from Matt: “caribou,” “CC,” “Little Bear” “Gracie” Other nicknames from Vanessa: “Smooch” “Pooch” “Gracie Lee” “Gracie Lou” “Carrie” “Gracie Pacie.”

Hell at this point it feels like her actual name, Caroline Grace, is the nickname for all of these names!

Birth Name: Lincoln Cody

Nicknames: When Wesley and I started thinking of names we knew we wanted NO nicknames to stem from our son’s first name. If I was going to name my son something I wanted people to call him that, dammit! Well we settled on Lincoln even though we knew “Linc” was a possibility. What can we say, we loved the name too much. We’ve only called him “Linc” once or twice and every time we do, we look at each other in disbelief like “how dare we??”

Here are some nicknames that have evolved:

Daddy’s nicknames- Sweet Pea, Bubba, Little Angel, Little $hit (only under his breath in mid-tantrum)
Mommy’s nicknames- Punkin’, Baby, Honey
Aunt Lisa’s nicknames- Tink-a-Linc, Tink, Tinkster, Tink Tink

We have the few people who call Lincoln “Linc” and honestly it doesn’t completely annoy me, BUT if you’re a friend or family member and reading this and you don’t already call him “Linc”, DON’T start :). Most family know to call him by his name because they themselves aren’t fans of shortened first names so it works out. And honestly only my sister calls him by a nickname and I have no choice but to just go with it.

Birth Name: Victoria Grace

Nicknames: When Vinnie and I came up with “Victoria Grace” for a million and one reasons, we thought we would call her Tori, but when she was born it just didn’t feel very natural for me. So the poor thing has a total identity crisis because her Dad calls her Tori but I have evolved from calling her Tori to Bibi to Vivi or Vivi Grace, or just Sis. Nicknames are funny because you spend all this time trying to pick a beautiful, meaningful, history-filled name for your child, and then you end up saying good ol’ “Sis” 8000 times a day. Not exactly what we had in mind when we were expecting her. Ah, the story of parenthood!

Birth Names: Kadon Wayne, Garner Lee, Bobby Porter

Nicknames: We always considered possible nicknames when naming our boys. I didn’t want a “Thomas” to be called “Tommy” etc. We haven’t ever encountered a nickname from someone for the boys that we didn’t like. So far so good! I always have a bunch of pet names that I call all of them “sweet pea”, “sweet potato”, “punkin”, “studmuffin” {they share that one with daddy too}!

Kadon is “Bubba” {that is what Garner and Porter both called him when learning to talk}, now Porter calls him “KK”, which is what some friends call him too. The hubby calls him “Kwik” because his initials are KWK.

Garner was nicknamed “Gar” by Kadon because that is how he said his name. When Garner learned to say his own name he called himself “Nar-nar” and it stuck, that is how Porter said it too {along with “Bubba”. We shorten it to “Nar” sometimes and also call him “Narnito”….no idea why. His daddy also calls him “Mouse” because he would live on cheese if we would let him :).

Porter is “Monkey Bug”, I started that when he was little bitty and have no idea why. It is shortened to either just “Monkey” or “Bug” too. He was a chubby little guy so we also called him “Butterbean” when he was about 6 months old. When I was preggo with him the doctors thought he was going to be a 10 pounder, so because of Porterhouse steak Brandon would call him “Meat” sometimes…it made me laugh but I wasn’t fond of it. Other people looked at us like we were freaks LOL!

 

What about you?  Any fun nicknames in your house?  What’s your nickname story?

Vanessa Barry
Vanessa is the co-founder of Austin Moms Blog. She is also the Director of Communications for IDEA Public Schools, a nationally recognized network of K-12 public charter schools serving more than 15,000 students. She has a blast learning, loving and laughing with her four-year-old little lady, Caroline Grace.

7 COMMENTS

  1. My son is Sterling Nicholas….but I call him Goose sometimes. It started as “you silly goose” then is became just “goose”

  2. we have a Jacob Ross…I had always wanted just “Jake” but my husband thought Jacob looked better on a diploma…..But we still call him just Jake!!!  2nd child….Katelyn Briann….never thought she would have a nick name when we chose this name or should I say Jake informed us that he was calling her Katelyn no matter what we named her….So Katelyn Briann it was….She was 5 weeks early very tiny and kind of looked like a tiny bug….for some reason one day out of the blue I called her Katie Bug, well it stuck..even in daycare teachers and other students called her Katie Bug….She promptly told her kindergarten teacher to call her Katie Bug and wrote it on all her school papers until about 3rd grade….Now at 11 years old she really only hears Katie Bug from me or dad or her brother if he really wants something from her….we have chose to stick to Katie…if at some point in her life she feels like she needs to be more “grown up” and wants to go by Katelyn that is her right, but to us she will always be Katie Bug……

  3. My 8 year old daughter is Ashlin. My sister and her family call her Schwin or Schwindoggie. Interesting …

    My 4 year old son is Caiden and I have called him Caidenbaby since the day he was born.

    I am still called by nickname, Tuti by my sister and dad. Awesome.

  4. We call gavin ” honey” so often that he has now started referring to himself as honey. Lol…its cute but we finally had to give up honey and call him by his real name, gavin.

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