My father had a thing for giving people and things cutesy nicknames. I have no idea where it came from. Perhaps it was influenced by his family's use of nicknames.
- Herbie: Neva
- Bo: Florence
- Tuck: Margaret
- Nene: Anita
- Bill/Jack: The "B" word (I can understand not wanting to use that one!)
Why did they all use nicknames? Where did they come from? Why did they stick? It's a puzzlement to me since I don't go to the family reunions where these questions might be answered. Did their mom and dad have fun names or were they "Mom/Mother/Ma'am" and "Dad/Father/Sir" to the kids?
But what I am more interested in is his names for food. I know there are a lot more than these but here are some that are strange:
- su-zu: cereal
- no-ho-po: ice cream
- nummy: milk (I seem to recall that this came from declaring that milk is "mmmmm...nummy!" when trying to get Karen to drink it. Was there a problem getting her to swallow the stuff?)
- lick-lick: licorice
My aging brain is not coming up with more. Where in the world did "su-zu" and "no-ho-po" come from? What other things had odd names?
And why did he and his sisters all have nicknames but only a couple of his children wound up with nicknames that stuck?
- Shoe-shoe: Karen
- Poss: Beth
Did the rest of us get new names that just disappeared? (Names like "Pagrs," "Bobbers," "Chuckbert" don't count...they came late and are based on the real names.)
"No-ho-po"?
14 comments:
"No-ho-po" was what I called ice cream when I was a tot.
Karen couldn't say "Beth" or "Peggy" when she was learning to talk. Beth was "Possy" and I was "Beesey." "Possy" stuck, and "Beesey" went the way of the dodo.
Here is what I wrote after EutslerFest 1998.
I asked how the sibs got their nicknames. It turns out Grandfather nicknamed everybody and everything. In fact, his nickname was “B.” Bobo (Florence) said she got hers because her parents were always referring to “Mrs. This” or “Mrs. That” in the parish. Bobo announced that her name was “Mrs. Moash.” So Grandfather nicknamed her Moash. Nene, however, being a little thing, couldn’t say Moash, so it came out “Bobo.” Tuck (Margaret) as a child used to say “Tucka-tucka-tucka-tucka-tee” all the time. Dad (Bernard) used to sit outside and watch the milkman deliver milk in a horse-drawn wagon. The milkman would say to the horse, “Git up now, Bill.” Dad would say, “Giyup, Bill.” So Grandfather started calling him Bill. Bobo said that Dad’s favorite nursery rhyme was “Jack, Be Nimble” and would race around the house saying it over and over and over. And he’d leap over imaginary candlesticks. So his nickname became Jack. Anita was Nene from a very early age—just a diminutive. Nene nicknamed Herbie, who was also known as Shugo and Colie, in high school, but she doesn’t know exactly how it started. She and Herbie had a secret language, which they still occasionally use, and Nene figures it may have come from that. Grandfather called his sister Minerva “Pinny Pinerva,” which became Penny.
Poss is based on a real name! Phonetically, it is easy to understand how a young Shoe-Shoe transformed Beth into Poss.
another Jack-ism: Go T-O-P
I wonder if "no-ho-po" is related to neopolitan?
Though they aren't truly nicknames, four of the five of Jack's kids use names that are derivatives of the given name. I wonder if that is a related trend?
and Bernard was Jack in NM and Bill in Kansas. (Sorry Chuck, but you outed the N word)
Jack was still Bill when I first knew him in Las Vegas. I don't remember if this was 1940 or 1941. And I don't know when or why it got changed to Jack. I always thought no-h-po had something to do with the North Pole being cold as ice cream (or vice versa! And of course you know it was Jack who gave me the nickname Maggie. And how do you figure "Poss" is related phonetically or otherwise with "Beth"? Thanks, Pagrs, for finding out all the details from the aunties and recording it!
Izzy, I think su-zu for "cereal" can also be explained easily with phonetics. Will you tackle that one and the relationship between "Poss" and "Beth"?
And green beans used to be geemies, and the refrigerator was the fee-er wee-er. What else?
I always wondered about all the nicknames. I know Gram told me the tale about the horse pulling the milk wagon, but she told me Dad would yel, "Gup, Bill! Gup, Bill!" and she also told me the "Jack be Nimble" story. It's ineteresting about Penny, I never knew that one...
Dad also misused words. My favorite was when Pagrs, Mom, Dad and I were on our way to Albuquerque for some celebration and we went down by the way of Hwy. 14. As we were passing Penn State (there's another one...) oh, I mean the State Pen, Dad said, "I wonder if the prisoners still have those congenital visits." Pagrs and I looked at each other with our mouths hanging open and then proceeded with silent, shaking laughter. I thought Pagrs was going to drive off the side of the road!
Or the flood that threatened to undulate the countryside.
It would be disconcerning to be the passenger of a car driven by a person in convulsive, silent laughter!
Thanks, Pagrs, for the history of the aunts' and Dad's nicknames.
It boggles my mind that my grandfather's nickname was "B." and my father didn't use the B word, yet they insisted on perpetuating the name nobody used. I'm happy to put it to rest.
I seem to recall geemies now. I know I never asked anybody to pass the geemies since I wouldn't touch such vegetables as a child so I never really sank in.
Do any of my sisters or mother still use any of these silly names? Has anybody taken up the tradition with new words of their own?
Don't forget Dad's pronunciation of nuclear. He and Dubya both pronounced it noo-cu-lar. And he hated when I teased him about his midwestern pronunciation of wash (he said "warsh").
We had a nickname for underwear when the kids were little. They were "toonies." Some thought it was because of the fact that kids' underwear often has cartoon characters, but the origin was from Kevin's Hispanic daycare provider (the one currently in jail!) called them "chones." Kevin's little mouth re-interpreted it as "toonies." We used the word for many years, but no longer do.
As for Beth ---> Poss. The phoneme /p/ is the unvoiced cognate to /b/, so a substitution there is understandable. The phoneme /θ/ (the "th" sound) is one of the last phonemes to emerge in a child's developing speech, and it is often substituted. Substituting /s/ isn't the usual substitution, but given that both are unvoiced sibilants, it is certainly understandable.
Interesting analysis of how Beth might have become Possy. But there might be a little problem.
"Peggy" became "Beesey." If the "B" in Beth became "P" because it's an unvoiced cognate of "B," why did Peggy's unvoiced "P" become a voiced "B"? Or perhaps we just misunderstood what Karen was saying and we turned her P to a B.
We're going to have to dig out the "Take the third red M&M from the left with your right hand" tape out and listen to Karen's speech.
There are phonological processes that happen over groups of phoneme types that may explain the p/b thing....I thought of the discrepancy of the possy and beesie thing. It would be great to go back and listen and do an analysis. I haven't done articulation or phonetic process therapy in many years.
Is Karen's "Take the purple M&M that's third from the left of the yellow M&M and put it between the blue and the green M&M that's left of the orange M&M" on the reel-to-reel tape recorder? And is that old tape recorder still around here? I haven't seen it in years. Did you take it home, Chuckbert, to transfer things to CD?
The left hand, rightmost M&M tape is on the reel-to-reel tape. No, I don't have that steamer trunk-sized tape recorder.
Maybe Costco deals with audio recordings as well as video. We need to get that tape digitized!
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