Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Dolly

 I was filling out Alina's birthday card the other day. (A day late, but she's a baby, she doesn't know the difference...) I decided to jot down a bunch of names that we've been calling her throughout the year. A lot of the names won't stick but I wanted to be able to look back years from now and remember some of them.

 When Alina was just an idea in my tummy, we nicknamed her Peanut. It's funny how we always referred to the baby as Peanut for a full nine months and then she was born and we quit calling her Peanut right away. Other favourites that we call her are Monkey, Boo Boo, Pete (Sleepy Pete), Stinky or Stew (Stinky Stew), Bo Bina (Alina Bo Bina) and Betty, to name a few.


When I was a wee one my mom started to call me Dolly because she said I looked so much like a doll. I had rosebud lips, full, dark hair and I was pretty like a doll. The nickname absolutely stuck. My mom still calls me Dolly or Doll, now that I'm older. She was pretty embarrassing about it for my entire life. She would call out to me in stores with that name or even last year, when I was working she would ask for Dolly on the phone and quickly correct herself. My boss would say, "It's for you ... Dolly." Bah! But lucky for my mom, I am a nice daughter and haven't given her too much grief over her slip ups. After all, it is like my 'other' name.

Me.
 What is with nicknames anyway? Some can be so overpowering that they become the person's name. I remember when Rob and I named Alina, we thought about other names that people might end up calling her; Ally, Lena or Al. I liked all of those choices and hope that if her name changes over the years, it doesn't change too much.

 Rob has a friend named Mark, that has been called Beaver since high school. If I was his mother I would be horrified. You take that nine months (or longer) to really put a lot of thought into a great name for your child and then one a-hole in his 15th year changes everything. I still get confused when Rob calls him Mark.. I have to go "Oh, you mean Beaver.."

  There's always that person that calls everybody by some kind of nickname. I had a friend like that in high school that called me by my last name. I know someone now that calls me by the name of my home town. I do enjoy being called something different for some reason. But I know that not everyone feels that way. I also know that some people get really offended when you shorten their name. I ended up calling my co-worker by a shortened version of her name for awhile until I finally clued in that she introduced herself as her full name, every single time.

 Madonna is well known for her nickname, Madge. Apparently her ex Guy Richie swears she was nicknamed Madge because it is short for "her majesty.." Madge is known for hating the nickname and lucky for her, she is more well known as Madonna. Robert Van Winkle more popularly known as Vanilla Ice also had a big dislike for his nickname. He earned it by being one of the only white dancers in a break dancing group. The name stuck and he went with it. I will say that if someone asked me who Robert Van Winkle was, I would probably think they were referring to Father Time.

 So all nicknames are certainly not liked. Me, personally I don't mind being called Dolly by my mom. Is it because I'm completely used to it? Probably. It also reminds me that my mom still thinks of me as her little doll, which is kind of cute in a puke in your mouth kind of way.

 What do you think of nicknames?
Do you have a nickname and what's the story behind it!?
Are you offended by the idea of someone give you a shortened version of your name or a nickname?



7 comments:

Amanda said...

My bff calls me "Manda" but most other friends (including Sam) call me by my surname "Dales". Or "Daleso". x

Heather @ The Maritime Reader said...

I don't really have any prominent nicknames, but we have called Molly Mollycakes since she was born...every once in awhile, my father in law also calls her Mollster which I think sounds a bit too much like Molester, haha. Brian calls her "baby girl" but I think he might have to get out of the habit of that sometime ;) I like Lena for Alina!!

Unknown said...

Dolly- love it. and geeeez you really do look like a little doll! So crazy!

My best friend Megan and I both worked for the zombie run at the same time. Everyone called her Byrd and yup, everyone called me Soup.

It's weird because I spent literally a year and a half only being called Soup to the point that it was weird to hear my own name. Now no one calls me Soup and I miss it. Steve calls me "baby" and again, its weird when he calls me Megan. Who knew their own name could sound weird.

Rachel said...

My grandparents didn't want their kids to have nicknames, so they purposely gave all of their sons short names, including my Dad--but the funny thing is, my dad is probably one of the most nicknamed guys I know! And it's funny how nicknames change or become not so appropriate. Some of Angel's family called him "hueso" when he was growing up, it means bone or boney, because he was apparently really skinny. That's funny to me now because as an adult he's more on the side of solidly built that bone-skinny!

Alex[andra] said...

I think nicknames are cute. In high school, because there were so many other Alex's, my name was Lexy (with a "y"). I thought Lexi with an I was cooler though. Also, my initials are A.S. So eventually my name became Lexias.

Now the only nickname I have is related to my last name.

Happy Fit said...

This is so weird - I was thinking about doing a blog post about my nickname last night!! Anyway, Josh's family is big on nicknames and they're all so creative. Josh gave me the nickname Laser awhile ago. Many people call me that exclusively, and I like it because it sounds kind of badass. Growing up I thought nicknames were cool so I often tried to give them to myself, but we all know that doesn't work - remember on Seinfeld when George started calling himself "T-bone"? Hilarious. Anyway, just recently people have been calling me Lisa "Have-A-Mango" because my last name Avramenko sounds like that. I think it's fun to have nicknames - it's a sign of friendship and familiarity. Thanks for the post, Dolly :)

Jade Wright said...

Gorgeous nicknames for your little lady.. and it is a stunning photo of her too!!

Peanut has been my nickname since I can remember :) haha

Dolly is also a very sweet nickname and so perfect with your lips.. very cute!!

Have an awesome weekend xxxx

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