What pet names do you call your kids?

[Roxietrees]

Just out of interest really and wondering if pet names are class-based. I grew up working class and was called love, lovee, baby, babe and variations of those by my parents, depending on how old I was. I’d say I’ve gone up a couple or so class notches since becoming parent..maybe not quite to the realms of middle class, more just graduated from Asda to Tesco! But I call my 4 yo DD nicknames based on her real name, baby, bubba, sweetheart when she’s upset, bum bum face sometimes to make her laugh, monkey, sometimes sweet pea. I feel like darling is very middle class or am I wrong about that? I’ve only ever heard middle class parents call their kids darling. And love and babe is more working class, both make me cringe a bit (maybe cos of over use from my own childhood! But I couldn’t ever call my own DD that) so also wondering do you find yourself calling your DC the names your parents called you as a kid or actively avoiding them?!

Wiggle or Wiggles depending on if I'm referring to 1 or both DC at the same time.

Chicken licken, chicky lick, sausage, sauce, sweetheart, pet lamb, pet, my lamb, darling, my love. And a few variations of his name. I do use some terms of endearment my mum used/uses for me, as well as many of my own.

DH started off calling our kids Little Boy (LB) and LittleTinker (LT) but now DS is just about as tall as him he calls him kiddo.
I call them derivatives of their names

Darling, sausage, sausage pie and babby.

And apparently when I'm slightly exasperated with her, "dear". I try not to call her dear. I hadn't realised it was a tell till she told me.

Morrisons and Sainsbury’s straddle between classes, full of people wandering around aimlessly wondering where they fit into society, with a basket of quinoa in one hand and a basket of baked beans in the other 🤣

Slightly off topic but you can’t change your class, that’s why’s it’s old fashioned and doesn’t fit with modern living
you can be social mobile and earn more go up the social economic ladder but you can’t change the class you were born into

Dolly, still do although he’s 25, has a beard and is 6ft 2!

DS - bean (short for strong bean as he is so lanky). He finds it hilarious
The dog - sausage pops 🤣🤣🤣

Me too!

The oldest is bubba, babe or babes and my love mostly.

The youngest is called baby.

I grew up being called Duck or Duckie, but called my DC darling, love, sweetheart, chick...and whatever name came to mind so it might be pumpkin, apple face, long legs, Horace, turnip head, gorgeous, Lord of the Dance, creature feature, Norman Stanley Fletcher, jelly bean...anything. They got used to my weird ways.

😂 surely Sainsburys is a cut above Morrisons! (Also I have genuinely bought quinoa and baked beans in the same shop…) I think OP has shocked me, I didn’t realise how far I’d fallen from a Sainsbury’s childhood to an Asda adulthood 😕 got to start climbing my way back up, via Tesco.

worse is ‘babby’

Sweetie, sweetheart, darling girl, sweetie girl, gorgeous girl.

Also: plonker, muppet, sausage, trumpybum and grumpy head.

Context is required 🤣

Darling, darl, my prince, my princess, pudding, pudding-pants, pumpkin-pants, ted, teddy, ted-bear, sweet-stuff, sweetie pie, chicky, chikadeemus.

Three young adult DC 😬

I love bab I’m not a brummy

I called DS Babs, Babsie. Now he's an adult I call him ma darlin'.

Monkey face, sausage roll, pork chop and some specific to them ones too. Darling makes me cringe! I think it sounds like something from an old romance novel like mills and boon.

More recently I call my teens dickhead a lot. In jest obviously....mostly

Pickle, peanut, Pumpkin, precious. Lots of ps!

Also darling and love.

And variants of her name - Flicky do dah, Flickedy do da, Felicity floo.

She's 2. I'm probably ruining her for life 🤣

Babe or my baby usually

But does it change over the generations? For example imagine a working class couple in the early 20C (for example miner, agricultural labourer, in service)
Their children get a good education and middle class jobs ( teacher, scientist, architect, banker). By your reasoning, their children are still working class because their parents were, however much they adopt middle class lifestyles/values.

What about the grandchildren? By your definition they are born of working class parents with middle class incomes/jobs/lifestyles.

Are the grandchildren still working class or are they middle class if they are born to parents who have middle class incomes/adopt middle class attitudes/ values.

When my now DS17 was little I called him poppet,sausage, little bear, bear cub

We used to say bubba when they were babies but stopped very early and we’ve never used any others, my parents never used them for us either, never noticed anyone in DH’s family using them either. Or my friends now other than the occasional darling. We’re not in a region where things like love get used by strangers, you occasionally get “my lovely” in shops but it’s pretty rare.

Oh, all sorts, good and bad. But the ones that look bad are only used affectionately! Sweetie, sweetheart, previous firstborn, previous second born, honeybunch, petal, squish, ratbag numbers one and two, grotmonster (when a bath is severely required), pesky varmint, short stuff/big yin depending on age of child (youngest knows he’ll be short stuff when he’s 6’6”, it’s not size dependent), fruit if my loins, hostage to fortune (gets a giggle when I holler it up the stairs)…. All sorts!

DD didn’t actually know her real name when she started nursery at 3. She was called baby.