The Naming of Babies

[gaudior]

So, I've heard that as a six-month-old, Fox (not their IRL name) should recognize their name. The difficulty with this is: here are the things that we call our baby:

Cub
Little Cub
Little Cubling
Little Cublet
Smol
Smol One
Little Smol
Babling
Bab
Little Fox
Little Sea-Eyed Fox
Little Ocean-Eyed Fox
Littling
Bablet
Babe-i-let
Se-basu-chan
Se-babe-stian
Kiddo
Kidlet
Kid
Hey, there.

So, they are basically doomed.

OTOH, they don't know my name either, as I don't go around referring to myself as "Mommy" in the third person, and everyone else calls me by my given name. They are making a valiant effort at naming rushthatspeaks as "Dadadadadadada," so we'll go with that.

--R

(Oh, and, because I haven't posted in basically ever: does anyone not want to see kid posts? Should I set up a filter?)

Comments

[julian]

I wish kid posts. Filterage unnecessary.

[rosefox]

Kit looks up in response to "Kit" because it's the name we use when we want to get their attention. Other names (of which they have a billion) are used in other situations. We call them "bean" all the time but if I said "Hey bean" it wouldn't get nearly the same reaction that "Hey Kit" does.

[mrissa]

This strikes me as a totally normal list of things to call a baby, but my 10-year-old goddaughter still answers to Moozer, so maybe I am not the person to ask. (Lillian, Lily, Lily Milly--there was this glorious moment when Pamela reports thinking, "Oh, yes, that's a literary reference," and then it belatedly hit her that it was a literary reference to her--Lily Milly Moo, Moo, Moozer...and many many more. Beepus. Honkus. I don't even know what-all, when she was the Fox's age. Babies: they figure it out.)

My cousin's child had all sorts of words for objects, dog, cat, starting to get verbs, etc., but no parental names. This worried them. But upon some investigation, they were not calling each other by their given names in front of him, they were not calling each other Mommy and Daddy, they were not referring to themselves or each other as particular parent names when talking to him. He was 18 months old. They went home and started making some effort to say things like, "Oh, look, Noah, Daddy's got the crackers," and "What's Mommy doing, Noah?" and the poor wee sprout learned those words instantaneously. It was like, oh, thank heavens, I kept wondering who you people were.

But that is a solid year later than the Fox is now, so: you have time for Rush to inquire, "What on earth is Mommy thinking, Cub?" and say, "Yes, listen to Mommy, Bablet, radishes are excellent prepared this way, just put them in your mouth, not in your hair," and build up a data set.

[gaudior]

It was like, oh, thank heavens, I kept wondering who you people were. Laughing out loud, that is excellent.

We do do a fair bit of "look, it's your Dad!" and "your Mom is going to be right back," and "here comes your Rax" and so forth, now that I think about it-- like their given name, these are not words we use as often as "food" or "diaper" or "kitty-cat" or "cute," but they should be able to get them from context when they get to the point of easily-picking-up-names-for-things rather than wait-these-sounds-coming-out-of-people's-mouths-have-meaning?!

[mrissa]

Yes, that is just what my cousin was not doing. They were only calling each other pronouns, and he/she/they/you was not giving the kid anything to grab onto. "Look, it's your Dad!" does. Especially if Rush makes a game of theatrically popping up, "hi! yes? etc." when kidlet says, "dadadada" etc.

I will be interested to see what babymouth makes of Rax. I suspect that one of the reasons we have Da and Ma as parent names is that they are really easy for small mouths. Tim was "Unca Dim" temporarily when Rob was quite small, but Lillian got the T sound very quickly.

(This was a milestone in my dad's relationship with Tim, actually. "Does it upset him that the baby calls him dim?" Dad asked. I said, "Dad, if Roo called him Uncle Stupidhead, Tim would coo, 'awww, he has a special name just for me!'" Which taught my father a new thing he quite liked about Tim.)

[sovay]

The difficulty with this is: here are the things that we call our baby

Seems like a reasonable list to me. We call the cats similarly.