Wednesday, March 21, 2012

What's in a Name

Part of the responsibility of having a child is the naming of it, don't you think?


Careful consideration is usually given to the choice of name, after all, you do usually have a fair few months to ponder on this.  And it's not just the name itself that has to be considered, but also the combination with surname, the initials and then the combination of the possible abbreviations of the first name with the surname. 


Kids seem to love abbreviating each other's names, giving each other nick names, thereby undoing all the months of hard work done by the parents.  Here in Germany it seems to be essential that everyone has a "spitzname" and the bizarre thing is that they're not always shorter or easier to say than the child's actual christian-ed name...


For example, my son Ben (already an abbreviation of Benjamin) apparently gets called "Benny" (or maybe it's "Beni"?) by the girls.  Jas (abbreviated from Jasmine) seems to have escaped any further abbreviating.


Here are some of the others;
Vanessa - Va-va
Corinna - Coco
Johannes - Jojo (the J is pronounced as if it's a Y, so he's actually Yoyo)
Enis - Penis (made me howl with laughter, except it's pronounced "pen - is")
Celine - Tse-Tse
Viviene - Vivi
Elsa - El-el
Svenja - Svenny
Kati - Ka-co
Maya - Mai-mai
Josephine - JoJo
Elena - Ella
Luisa - Lulu
Julia - JuJu (again the J is a Y, hence Yu-yu)
Lorenzo - Lo-Lo
Flora - Flo
Letitia - Titsy (they really have no idea)
Tristan - Trissi
Julian - Juli


I'm so glad I don't have to name any more children because I'd have to give careful consideration into what kind of spitzname the child would end up with.



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