In the thread What do you call your grandmother? there are many names that kids make up for those relatives. Rather than hijack that thread, let’s mention some of the names that kids have come up with, usually from mishearing, mispronouncing or otherwise confusing what they heard with something they say instaed.
An example in my family was what an older cousin did to the name “Isaac” and which was taken up by all of use younger cousins as “Igate.” (Pronounced eye-get.)
Bubba for Brother is probably too common to deserve special treatment, but maybe “Sookie” for Sister isn’t all that common.
What are some you’ve heard (or even made up yourself) for family names.
That’s fine, JohnT, and I’m not all that picky. Pet names are whole nuther can of worms and their origins probably stretch to the ends of the earth. Some I can report are: Spot, Poochie, Zero, Phantom, Chief, and my favorite of them all was a cat I named Blotharta.)
Boy 2.0 is named Zack. When he was 11 or so, one of my cousins jokingly began calling him Zackie Pooh. Naturally, we taught the now-3.5-year-old to call him that, because it was funny. (Zackie Pooh is now 16 and six feet tall, 200 pounds.) Littlest Miss, at 20 months, can’t quite manage that nickname, so she has abbreviated to Pooh, which is very very funny.
Husband’s mother is Mimi, because she referred to herself as Memaw, and the oldest granddaughter managed to get Mimi out of her mouth. It just stuck, and it’s easy for little kids to say.
The first-born grandchild for my parents, my sister’s daughter, was trying to say “Grandpop” or some such thing, and it came out “Gre-gre.” So that was his name for all subsequent grandchildren.
Baby Sophia went through a month-long EXTREMELY CUTE phase where she would identify animals by the sound they made. This was before she learned to talk, but long after she thought that she was talking… if that makes any sense. So she would ask if we were having some chicken by saying something like…
“Mumble-mumble, ming-a-wing, the bawk-bawk-bawk?”
Or if the dog did something she didn’t like…
“Bow wow! mumble-mumble-mumble!”
We had one dog, a scottish terrier named Fergie. For some reason, she kept calling him “Sait-ko.” Have no idea where that came from.
OTOH, I have her beat - when I was 3, 4 yo, I had my own language that only my brother understood. I would say something, the family would turn to Jim, and he’d say “John wants milk” (or whatever.)
There was a cute fictional one (specifically, in Dennis The Menace) some years ago.
Dennis finds and adopts a stray cat, which he names Hotdog.
It was all very meta. The gist of the story arc for the next couple of weeks was that nobody else in the strip could accept that a cat could be named Hotdog. Everybody argues with Dennis that you can’t name a cat Hotdog, and Dennis argues back with everybody, to the effect that a name is just a name and he can name a cat any name he wants.
TheKid renamed my parents Bama and Bampa. I don’t remember when they became the usual Grandma and Grandpa - probably around the same time she realized Bampa sounded too much like bumpah, the family name for buttocks.
My grandnephew is overly blessed with grand, great grand, and great great grand parents. My nephew and his wife tried to get him to call my mom “Grandma (first name)”, but he was having none of it. She became Gramma Blue Truck. I became Treety. He couldn’t say the initials of my first name (what my family calls me), it came out as TT. Auntie TT became Treety.
When my kid was 4-5 she had huge adenoids and ear problems. (We didn’t know)
" mommy, I have a beaver in my mouth"
" don’t blow out the candle bire"
" I want bive brench bies"
My poor kid couldn’t hear!!! A trip to the ears nose and throat dr. And a huge falling out with her previous pediatrician we find out she needs her adenoids taken out and ear tubes put in.
She went through a portion of her young life hearing like she was under water.
She had a fever in her mouth.
don’t blow out the candle fire.
I want five French fries.
We still call a fever a beaver.
“honey can you check if she has a beaver’ she feels hot”
My great-grandparents were: Gingo, Grandy, Old Oma and Old Opa. I named them myself.
Draught = giraffe
We call draughts “giraffes”, because my little sister misheard my mum and for years thought a giraffe would come into the room if she didn’t close the door. “Close the door because of the giraffe” and “is there a giraffe in here?” are perfectly normal things to say.
Stork = Oliver
We call all storks Oliver, because in Dutch it’s “ooievaar”, which troubled my youngest sister when she was learning Dutch. She knew someone called Oliver, so she decided that all storks must be called Oliver. Now we say: have you seen Oliver sitting on that nest up there? And going to our local pub The Stork: I’m going to see Oliver.
For a few weeks I would hear my three year old mention that she saw Scottie Pippen at school. So of course I was like, “Is Pippen doing a goodwill tour of schools?” I heard it again and again, thinking there must be a kid named Scottie Pipken or something. Finally after a month, I unearthed the Scottie Pippen mystery.
The gerbil in the classroom was named Scottie Pippen by the class…
My friend’s daughter called balloons “mancas” for some unexplained reason.
My nephew couldn’t quite get “Grandpa” down, so he became Bumpa.
My brother Chris had a girlfriend many years ago - her kid couldn’t pronounce his name, so called him “Piss”. Good for many laughs! Needless to say, that didn’t last.
When my brother was 3 he drove my mother to distraction by crying for “bollos” (sounds like BALL-ohs) the whole way through the grocery store. She went up and down the aisles picking up random items, asking him if this was bollos. Finally, he pointed out a can of black olives.
Yep, we call them bollos to this day, and he’s now 39.
Tollbooths are paga-paga (“pay-pay”); bikini tops are tapatetas (“titcovers”) rather than the official sujetadores (lit. “holders”) because as my then-5-yo brother reasoned “that’s not trying to hold anything anywhere”.
