Monday, March 14, 2011

Last Name first?

When we were picking out a name for our son when I was pregnant (i.e. Lukas), we had many factors to consider.  One of which, was what sort of nick names he might have.  (Another was initials.  You don't want your initials to be P.M.S. or P.I.G.  Well Lukas' are L.P.S. and a friend so nicely pointed out that this could stand for "little piece of shit".  Lovely.  Hopefully he never lives up to those initials...)  The obvious nickname being Luke.  I love the names Lukas and Luke equally, so I was okay with him being called either.  And to be honest, I fully expected to call him Luke myself, but on most occasions I call him Lukas.  If I call him anything else it's usually "buddy" or "Lukey" and some times I throw a "Luke" in there. 

So for now he is Lukas.  But I know this will change, or will likely change, when he's in school (real school, not the "school" school he's in now) and has friends.  Because your friends really determine what you'll be called.  Or your coworkers or whomever you're around often.  My mom specifically picked first names for me and my brother that can't be shortened, or so she thought.  She wanted us to be called by our first name, not some derivative thereof.  (Although my brother Brent is often called "B" by me and my four letter name is often shortened to just the first two).  I sign informal emails to friends with this two letter pseudonym and don't mind it at all.  And in college my brother was called by my mom's name/nickname (how this happened, I'm not sure, but it is an "exotic" name, and somehow it stuck).  And the oddest thing is that my mom has never gone by her real name.  Perhaps it's because her first name is Ruth.  (Although I love it and told her I wanted to name my first daughter Ruth Ann and she about died and might have threatened me.)

At work, my boss often calls me by my last name.  And at first I thought that it was just a guy thing held over from their sports playing days.  But then I started thinking and realize that I call a few friends by their last name, so it must be a girl thing too.  Anyway, not sure where I was going with this post, it just got me thinking about what we call each other.
So yea, there's my random rambling for the day.  Does anyone have a nick name they hate????

1 comment:

  1. My children's nicknames were "Punkin" (as in "you adorable little punkin you") and "Tiger" (which as an Auburn grad is kind of funny) - and they both hated those nicknames - go figure!

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