Nicknames

Poor Debby's asked twice now about the origins of Gamma Wiggles' name, so now here 'tis:

Like all great nicknames, it comes from a kid who couldn't pronounce the real thing. It was probably about two years ago that we told Joshua we were going to visit Grandma Nicholls, and I don't know if he heard Wiggles when I said it, or not until after he tried pronouncing it himself, but man, he was sooooo excited to have a singing-and-dancing Aussie for his Gamma! She's been Gamma Wiggles ever since, except for with Ben. He's pretty horrified at our willingness to knowingly mispronounce her name like that. Every time he corrects us with this voice of, I don't know, condescending, waning patience, "It's GraNDma Nicholls! Not Gamma Wiggles!" Kills us every time, because of course we don't care.

Nicknames are a big thing on Matt's side of the family, and it was easy to get sucked into. The first time I heard somebody (probably Gamma) call Matt "Bubba" I just about fell out of my chair. I soon learned, however, that Bubba was not his name but his title: Bubba Matt. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that one came from young Mike's inability to say "brother." So that one gets busted out over here a LOT, but most frequently for Ben, because it's fun to say "Bubba Ben."

Come to think of it, Ben has about the most nicknames in our little family. His name just lends itself to them. When he was a baby he was Big Man Ben (from one of the NICU docs), and also Benjamima in addition to the usual suspects (Ben, BJ, and I believe there were even a couple of attempts at Benji). Then his cousin Lindsey started calling him Bennie, which stuck for a long time. Now Joseph calls him... well, Ben spells it "Bumrt," and I think that's pretty accurate. He actually wrote a little journal entry about it at school.

Joshua had a brief stint as "JD," but it never quite caught on. Mostly he's Josh or Joshie. And Joseph... Poor thing, I can't even bring myself to call him Joe or Joey. Matt calls him Jeb every once in a while, and we had plans to call him Eli for short. More often than not, though, I tend to go long instead of short: Giuseppe. For the time being, though, he's taken on the name Joshua only recently cast off: Little Stinker. BUSY Little Stinker.

Mostly, between brothers, they all call each other the same thing: "Heeeeeeey! That's MINE!"