Does your child have a nickname?

I named my daughter Mackenzie. At her daycare, I have heard some of the teachers call her 'Kenzie', and some family members do as well; although, none of them asked me or my husband if that was ok. Before she was born, I just didn't really want people calling her 'Mac'. Ironically enough though, my husband almost instantly started calling her 'Baby Mac' when she was born and that has sort of stuck and I catch myself calling her that occasionally, although I don't really care for it. She is 17 months old and I just hope all of this name variation doesn't have her confused.

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My Isabel has always been Isabel, but my Nicholas has always been Nick. It may be too early to tell with our newest (11 weeks old), but I'm hoping she'll stay Berkeley. I can't think of a derivative for her name that I like.

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I grew up with a name that really has no real nickname. So when naming my own children, I tried to do the same.
People try already to shorten Vivienne into Viv and Vivi, but I have never and will never call her anything but Vivienne.
I know that Henry could be a Hank one day, but for some reason that one doesn't bother me, as long as it fits his personality.
But in truth, I will try my best to avoid allowing people to shorten their names.

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My mother wanted me to be Jenny, and regrets naming me Jennifer. I found this out when I let them call me Jennifer in my first job; since then it has been my bit of filial devotion to generally go by Jenny. However, I am surprised by the number of people who shorten it to Jen too.

We do call our kids by nicknames, but I feel strongly that when they are older they can chose what name they want to use. I make it my personal policy to try to call people by the name they use in introductions.

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I named my first Nathaniel, and it drives me crazy when people shorten it to Nate or Nathan- but the flip side of the coin is that he's really interested in writing his name and I know Nathaniel is just too long for that, so we do Nate. That probably makes me a hypocrite, but I'm not sure I care.

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My name has never been truncated, my husband flirted with Chuck (thank God that was dropped) but for the boys mostly its either the Turd Brothers or their full names.

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My Jason doesn't have a nickname but my Christopher does. I made my husband promise not to call him Chris, long story....so his nickname is Toby....another long story.

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My boys both have nick names, but they have nothing to do with their given names. Family and close friends call them Bub and Buddie (formally Budha).

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Our sons have names that can't be shortened well - Guthrie and Turner - although they do have nicknames. I sometimes call them "Gus Gus" and "Turner Burner," and my husband has started doing the same. Don't know why, they just started coming out.

Both of our daughters are usuallly called by nicknames - Samantha is Sammie, and Rosalind is Roz.

I have taken nicknames into account when naming children.I have a strange affinity for girl names that have boyish nicknames - Samantha (Sammie), Francesca (Frankie), Roberta (Bobbie) and so on.

People have always assumed my name - Judy - was short for Judith, and it used to really bother me, so I have always had the opposite problem!

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We call my daughter Megan Maggie or Magpie. My son James only gets called by that name, I once asked him if he would like to be called Jim or Jimmy and he said NO. With my twins Haley we call Haley Baley and Lindsey is Linds. As for me I have always been called Missy which is wonderful since I really do not like being called Melissa.

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I am the only person I know who still calls my youngest child Timothy and I'm not consistent. To the rest of the world he's Tim.

I've never worried about nicknames as long as they're not hateful and the kids don't mind.

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My daughter Meredith gave herself her nickname - she started calling herself Mimi when she first began talking. Now that she is almost 7, "Mimi" is fading. She prefers Meredith at school but she is still Mimi at home sometimes and to her "old" playgroup friends who have known her since she was a baby.

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We've always, and always will call our daughter by her full name, Amelia. Nothing against nicknames, I've never once gone by the full version of my name. We just don't particularly like the shortened version (Amy.) It'll be interesting to see what happens later on when she starts school.. but to us, she'll always be Amelia.

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Oh, cute story.

My cousins had a baby when my daughter was a year and a half or so. They named the baby "Elizabeth." My dd couldn't say that, and it came out sounding like "Little Bit." And so, until she was 3 or 4, everybody took to calling her "Little Bit." It was a cute cute nickname, I thought.

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I don't tend to shorten my son Oliver's name. Only my best friend is permitted to call him Ollie. My daughter Eleanor is another story. I warned my husband before she was born that with two three-syllable names in the family, she was likely to be Ellie. I knew I would shorten it and so would other people. He said he was okay with that (but I suspect she will always be Eleanor to him).

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At our first ultrasound, my pregnancy was dated at 8 weeks and well the "baby" was so tiny.... So I named "it" SPECK. Obviously for the next 38 weeks i referred to the baby as Speck. Even once we found out she was a girl, we hadn't picked a name so we stuck with Speck. She is now 17 months old and she's still called Speck, by her family. The entire family. I may have scared my child for life, but I always thought Speck was a really cute name. And 17 months after she was born she's still gonna be Speck to me. Even her playmates and their parents use SPECK. I like it and it's stuck around this long....

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My name is Gry, and it's hard to find names shorter than that. I've always been Gry to my family (and all manners of cutiepie/sweetie/honeylove etc. from my mum), but with friends and even some co-workers I would be Grynet or Grysan depending.

My daughter is named Carla Rue, but we hardly ever use the Rue part. I have all kinds of nicknames for her, Carlykins, Kiki, Carla Darla etc.

I'm interested to see what she has to say about that once she gets old enough to have an opinion.

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You don't own your child, and you don't own their name. If they're old enough to be in school, and they're happy being called Ben instead of Benjamin (or, for that matter, being called Edward instead of Benjamin, or Lucky, or whatever people are calling them that they answer to), that's really no longer your business.

As far as family anecdotes go...

My sister went through her childhood being called Ginger. Sometime in her teens, she switched to Jennifer, then to Jenn (and I remember when she would hit me if I called her Jenn, too!), and now nobody calls her Ginger anymore. My family calls me, alternately, Connie, Con-con, and "Cana" (which the niecelings started, and which I strongly suspect might stick. Well, it's cute, anyway). In school (now that I'm an adult and have gotten tired of correcting people) I'm Constance. One of my uncles doesn't go by his name at all - it's an atrocious name, and the first day of school he came back home and declared that from now on, everybody would just have to call him Bill. I'm sure people assume that he simply has a horrible first name and the middle initial W. stands for William, but that's not the case. My other uncle spent several years going by his confirmation name because he didn't like his given name. My own father went by his stepfather's last name right up until he got two draft notices on the same day. The one with his own name was dated later, so he switched last names and never changed back. And his mother, for that matter, went by her middle name her entire life because she didn't like her first name.

A little later in generations, I am the only person who does not call my nieces by their nicknames. Their nicknames are very common names nowadays, so I use the long versions. Nobody objects, and the kids answer either way (though the little one will object that she's not either version of her name, she's "Da baby!")

Of all the things to worry about and "allow" people to do to your kids, I don't think it's sensible to spend so much worry on something you really, really, *really* cannot control.

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My daughter's name is Carmina. From the moment everyone found out, they wanted to shorten it. Friends call her Mimi (I'm guilty of that one too), my mom calls her Carmy, and dad calls her Mina.

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Allison is Allie or Allie Bee ( Scottish kids song)
Tyler is Boo, Boosie ( his sisters name for him)

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