Would a rose by any other etc.

[brigid]

I’m on google+ and you can find my profile here if you want to follow me on + or reader or whatever.

One of the current issues with google+ is that google is only allowing profiles with names that are “real” or that sound real. So you can’t, for instance, be assmaster46 or Papa Smurf or William Shatner (they banned Cpt. Kirk for being fake; he took to his authenticated Twitter account to complain). One of the guidelines is that you can use a name you’re commonly called, and they cite examples like a Charles being called Chuck, a William called Bill, a Robert called Rob or Bob.

When we were anguishing over what to name our child, my mother-in-law threw up her hands and said it didn’t matter WHAT we called him, everyone was going to call him something else. So we have Nikola, who is called Niko, Nano, Nilo, Nikac, Bud, Buddy, Nicky, and Boo. And Nano-saggy-britches, but that’s only under certain specific conditions (when his britches are saggy). At this time, almost everyone calls him Nano or Nikac, and he’s been actively rejecting the name Buddy in favor of Shiny (Shiny, Tiny, Don, and Buddy are characters on “Dinosaur Train, you see).

So if he grows up to be called Shiny, say, or Nilo, how would he prove to a place like Google+ that everyone knows him by that name? Because one of their corroborative methods involves sending them a scan of your state-issued ID, something that doesn’t normally include nicknames.

Anyway, my mother-in-law was totally right about him being called something other than his name. And now that we all have, for the most part, settled on a common name for him he’s calling himself by designations he makes up, which include:

Bug Baby
Spider Baby
Water Baby!
Fruit Baby
Pretty Kitty
Roy
Rusty¹
Shiny
Ninuta

1. Oddly enough, my father-in-law had the nickname “Rusty Jones” when he was younger, because his mustache was rust-red. ↩

Technorati Tags: nicknames, parenting, toddler

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Comments

[sidheblessed]

Added you on Google+. I'm the one with the inky jazz hands.

[waldo]

He also answers to (mostly because he's the only other person in the room) "Charlie Brown". I have no idea why, but for about the last ten years I've taken to calling all little boys "Charlie Brown" on occasion.

He also answers to "The Baby".

In other news, G+ has not yet thrown fits over my being known as "Wal Do". I guess I fit into that "name you're commonly called" thing? I mean, seriously more people know me as Waldo than know my real name. At least on line. *sigh* People With Power... make me nuts.

(who me, insomnia? what?)

[lassarina]

Yeah--and the "what your friends call you" is pretty misleading. I can point to three dozen people who refer to me exclusively as some variant of Lassarina. (And another four dozen who know the legal name attached to that Internet handle.) But I have no government ID showing me as Lassarina. And until that's not the case, I can only use G+ as my legal name, which makes me pretty sad.