What's in a name?

Growing up, my family was big on nicknames. I had more nicknames than anyone I've ever known. My brothers were constantly giving me new ones. Rin, Spin, Gringa, Gunga, Rinny of Arabia, Spindolowski, Hinge, Minnie (which morphed into Mickey) and the list goes on.

Even as an adult it's rare for me to be called Corinne. There are people (esp friends of brothers) who don't even know this is my name. More often than not I'm called Rin and then eleventy billion variations on this. I have to say I prefer being called Rin than Connie (which I get a lot from people who obviously can't read) or Corun.

I never call my kids by their full names it's always Lil-lil and Goosey (sometimes Lu). Skip laughs at me when I use his name and always replies with a tongue-in-cheek 'proper': "Yes, Corinne?"

D is usually just called 'the boy', though the girls are calling him Mr Dooby and it's starting to stick. In fact, the girls are naturals with nicknames, they come up with new ones all the time.

Someone asked me at the Top Bloggers event if they could find out my kids names, which made me chuckle as they're not really a secret. I use their nicknames here because that what I use in real life (and in my head), the way I write my blog is snippets from my brain rather than documenting my life, so to use their full names would feel weird. Kind of like how Skip laughs at me when I call him by his name.  Besides if they were supposed to pseudonyms then they wouldn't be very good ones!

In fact, I was 'discovered' at a park by someone who read my blog once because I was calling out 'Lil-lil! Goose' and they recognised the names.

It's funny, because sometimes when I'm on Facebook I see someone and think: "Hmmmm who's that?" because I don't recognise them without their nickname.

Do you have nicknames? Do you like them or do you prefer to be called by your full name?