What's in a Name?

Been thinking about nicknames. You know, how everybody has had one...how it's really hard to shake one....how they can really make or break you as a kid especially. (You know the kid they called "Big T" probably had an easier time than "Stink Boy" did. ) P. Diddy gets it. Look at how many times he's changed his nickname...Puff Daddy..Puffy...P.Diddy.. Diddy...just what does he go by now anyway? Isn't his name Sean?


I've had my share of nicknames too. My daddy named me Kitty (short for Catherine that they thought was way too dignified for me at the time) when I was just a baby. Everybody still calls me this. I've tried to shake it before, but it inevitably comes back to haunt me. I gave it up. I'll be an arthritic 80 year old woman and people will still call me Kitty. Ah well. It could be worse. Actually, it has been worse.


My scary fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Jones, used to scowl and call me Chucklehead with that stern scary mean-face of hers /shutter. I hated it at the time, but again it could have been worse. (She called my brother PeeWee). I learned later that she had at least one Chucklehead and one PeeWee every year and often more than that. Those kids were always her favorites.

Then there was that mean girl who called me Ratty once instead of Kitty. (I had my own private little nickname for her...heh.) Mean girls suck. Luckily, that one didn't stick. Her bad rep did, though...heh.


One of my best friends nicknamed me Tikki when I was 16 years old, awkward, tongue-tied, and ludicrously naive about everything. It was given to me out of love and humor and an appreciation for my sad sad little clueless state. None of this has really changed over the years (thus the title of my blog for all those needing me to state the obvious.) This is one nickname I hope I never outgrow.


My sisters have called me SuperFreak for years. They even sang it to me at my wedding reception. We won't go into the whys of that one. Suffice it to say the name fits.

I know I'm rambling. Here's the point. Names have power, and I've been trying to decide what to call my children when I refer to them on this so-very-public-I-think-I-might-throw-up blog site. It wasn't an issue on my private blog. I didn't let pervs and pedophiles read it, so I never felt the need to hide their identities.


I've been reading other sites to see how other people handle this. Very few of you use your real names. Some people will use only their first name and then nickname their family members with cute little terms of endearment (gag). Others tag their kids with a descriptor that tells me exactly what you think of your kid (i.e. Pookie, Hellboy, Daddy's Little Princess) I don't want to saddle them with monikers they'll hate me for nor do I want any self-fulfilling prophesy (again...why would ever name your kid Hellboy?)

By far the most common (and most annoying) are those blogs that use only initials. I'm not the only one either. This guy says it better and (insert warning here) much more colorfully than I could. All I gots to say is amen to that... sing it brotha.

So what's your opinion? Do I try and come up with a possibly permanent nickname that the people who will pick out my future nursing home will have to live with, or do I risk putting the names of three groovy teeny people out there on the big bad scary interweb?


(edited for atrocious use of commas)