I love my “Mimi” nickname, and I’m not trying to avoid sounding old. When my grandchildren speak *of *me and not to me, they refer to me as their grandma, and that’s perfectly fine too.
Mind you, at least that approach means the kid’s name will fit him better and better as time goes on. Better than the people who call their offspring cutesy wickle names, apparently forgetting that they won’t always be a baby…
I definitely do not subscribe to the view that means someone’s parents have more say in what they’re called than they do. Aside from anything else, we had 6 girls with variants of the name ‘Catherine’ in my school class, calling one of them ‘Kat’ was just practical.
(“You don’t have to call me darling, darling,
You never even call be by my name” David Allen Coe.)
We have a situation in our family. Mr.Wrekker has one sib. They have called her ‘Sister’ since she was a baby. It still sounds silly to me.
My Daddy had nicknames for all us. Mine was ‘boo-boo’. Embarrassing to say the least.
Thank God they dropped off as we grew older.
My brother-in-law had this happen to him in high school. Our teacher decided that no one would name their child Bo and there for it must be a nickname so the teacher refused to call him Bo and instead called him Bocephus since that must be his full name. In reality the name on his birth certificate was Bo. To this day I call him Bocephus when I want to mess with him and he gets irrationally angry and everyone round gets confused about why I’d use such a weird nickname. We finally had to explain it to our wives after a couple of years.
My FIL’s name is Bobbie. He’s 89 - that is not the name of an 89-y/o. He’s gone by Bob most of his life. I agree with you about cute baby names.
I stand with the OP. I reserve the right to call you whatever I want. I grant you the right to be annoyed that I’m not calling you Throatwarbler Mangrove. We may both do our own thing.
That said, I accept “Cat” as a fine nickname for Catherine, and may or may not deign to use “Mimi” depending upon whether the person looks like a “Mimi” to me(me). For me to use Moose I’d need to believe nobody would know who I was talking about if I used their given name.
In general, I’m OK with the OP’s train of thought. Where it falls apart are the examples chosen. Cat and Mimi are perfectly acceptable names; I have friends with those names. They’re both perfectly mainstream. Moose is a little out there but really not far from normal. If you have a problem with Mimi and Cat then I really don’t trust your judgement on what is acceptable.
Heck, I worked with a guy who legally changed his full name to “Megazone”, just one word. We all managed.
OTOH, I’m ‘Nana’ to the grand kids. I’m ok with it unless my kids use it. I know it saves confusion when we’re all together. Something sounds odd when my grown son calls me Nana.
My Daddy was ‘Granddaddy’ to the kids. The lil’wrekker was the last grandkid. She changed his name, all by herself, to ‘Diddy’. Now when they all talk about him they use Diddy.
Good as defined by the person to whom it applies should be the only applicable bar, but I can understand people being uncomfortable with some names which they identify with a specific person, which mean something in their language that gives them the giggles, or which they find difficult to pronounce. I also think they should make an effort. And if the OP decides that he’s going to call me a name which is not my own, I reserve the right to call him “hey you”.
I vaguely knew a guy who wanted to be called Manny. Luckily we didn’t hang out much. (Blech)
Cain? Noah? HAM!?!? Enoch, Abner, Job?
Jehovah?
~VOW
I won’t address the OP, because I don’t like his screen name.
Mulva?! 
Okay; it’s Samuel. No offense to anyone here who shares that name, though I assume none of you are toddlers.
It still beats Deuteronomy. 
Same…especially coupled with his examples of ‘good’ nicknames. Jesus.
As someone who’s had to deal with people imposing unwanted nicknames, and has a preference for a name that would tend to raise eyebrows for me, fie on anyone who doesn’t accede to what a person wants to be called. Be this a nickname, legal name, cognomen, situational alias, nom de guerre, or whathaveyou.
Wait, so you won’t call your own grandmother what she asks you to call her? Did you call her Mimi as a child and then switch to "Grandmother’ when you got older? Is she offended when you call her “Mimi”?
Or are you talking about grandmothers in general and saying you won’t refer to a grandmother as “your Mimi”? I generally go with whatever a small child uses, but use “your grandmother” or “your gramma” for adults. I may wince a little (OK, a lot) when I hear “Me-Maw,” as it sounds to me like donkeys vocalizing, but I’ll say it if the small child does.
By the way, what about ethnic variations?* Nona* is Italian for grandmother, for instance. If the grandmother is Italian, is Nona an issue for you?
This, exactly. We have no way of knowing, from your OP, how serious you are about the topic, but when people take you at your word based on what you post, don’t be surprised if you get a serious reaction.
Actually, my mom prefers that my brother’s kids call her Mimi. I honestly had no idea it’s such a widely used term for grandma.
My family is Italian, we used to call my great grandmother Noni, which I have no problem with. “Mimi” just irks the shit out of me.
lol at “Mulva.”
I tend to call people be what they introduce themselves as until given a reason to vary from that. And having be raised right, I tend to call people older than me by their last name with the appropriate title.
When I was an undergrad (and a drama major, so the first 3/4 of my freshman year), there was an assistant professor in the drama department, Mr. Bryson, who, despite calling many other students by their first names always called me Mr. ToKnow. I asked him one day if he called me that because I didn’t call him by his first name (like many other students did). He said, “Could be.”
When I left the workshop that day, I said “Goodbye, Rhett,” and he replied without hesitation, “Goodbye, Knead!”