To be annoyed Dh calls out little boy by his initial?

[harvestingsomewarmth]

I know it’s his son too and he can call him what he likes but after months of carefully choosing the perfect name together which also has its own well known abbreviation I do feel a little miffed that he has taken to calling him by the first letter of his name.
The letter is also commonly a shortening of a completely different name altogether.

DH called DS "little boy" for years...until he became a teenager and told him he wasn't a little boy 🤣 now hes kiddo

Nicknames evolve.

DD’s name begins with A. I call her Edelweiss.

But he could have shortened Joseph to Joe which takes the same time to say as Jay.

My daughter sometimes gets called the name of a famous race horse, because her name is included within the horse's much longer name (also other nicknames stemming from her actual name)...only at home. Sometimes nicknames just evolve despite everyone's best intentions and within family they come (hopefully) from a place of affection. I have relative who somehow got the nickname Bumble as a toddler, and it has followed her into adulthood and even survived her emigrating to another country. She's in her 40s now and still Bumble to everyone, including her husband and inlaws. In this context the first letter of a child's name seems like something that I wouldn't get too worked up about.

Your kids have remarkably similar names to mine 🤣

But so what? The mother doesn’t get to control anything about what other people call their children. Nicknames are full of affection, and are a verbal illustration of that. Putting a stop to it would just be massive stick up the arse behaviour.

As the mother of a little (ish) Joseph, I'm baffled by the idea that the common, two-syllable name is too formal for him. 😆

OP - I love the name Joseph (obviously). Still, at 7, he has hundred of nicknames, only some tangibly related to his name. Once you've have half a decade of saying/shouting any name, it loses its lustre.

That being said, when he was a baby, it used to annoy me (completely unreasonably) how many people said jo-zeff rather than jo-seff - I hadn't appreciated until he was born that there were different pronunciations!

On any given day, my husband and I will call our toddler by a wide variety of increasingly ridiculous pet names, none of which bear any resemblance to her real name! It doesn't seem to have done her any harm though as she definitely knows her real name, even if, in practice, we seldom use it. Like you, we spent ages choosing the name and think it is beautiful, doesn't stop us using any term of endearment that pops into our heads! I think this is a non issue.

Joseph is a lovely name, and Joe will be the name other people will give to him. Maybe your husband calling him J could be quite a lovely thing, a name only his dad calls him by?

That’s a lovely name.
I wouldn’t like him shortening the name, he can shorten his own name when he’s older, if he chooses to change it.
Cute names are fine, but not changing his birth name as a parent.

I’ve never met anyone in real life who is as ridiculous about names as the average mumsnetter-it’s insane!

John

I know parents who call their children by their first and middle names initials AJ for example. But they are older seems strange to do it with a baby.

This is why asking for baby name opinions on the relevant threads is always a terrible idea, MN is probably the last place you should consult for sensible and measured advice on this subject!
Having said that, I would always advise expectant parents never to consult anyone on their baby name choices until baby has arrived safely and the name is a fait accomplis, otherwise you are inviting everyone to stick their oar in and try to talk you out of a name you have chosen with love. There is no name on earth that will be universally liked, all that matters is that the parents like it. It really doesn't matter what great-aunt Jane thinks, let alone internet strangers!

How would you react if you called your son by a nickname and your husband told you not to?

he can call his own child whatever he likes

My dad calls me Bug and has only used my real name a handful of times, despite picking it. Even at his speech at my wedding he said “Bug, who most of you know as (name)”. I wouldn’t be too annoyed tbh, people love a nick name, especially men.

If i shout Honey, Sweetheart, Love, Darling in my house everyone answers

My dad called me and my sister Boogaloo and Skoodleebido (Boog and Scoodlee for short). I still call my strapping 16 yr old Joshiepants. It’s a non issue OP.

Ah but did they pronounce it “aitch” or “haitch”? The latter would have really annoyed me.

My daughter is known as Gee (pronounced gi) by her dad because her nursery used to call her [first name] Gee as there were two with the same first name.

I like it.

My children are quite often referred to as Wiggy and Barn (very outing if any of my pals are on here 😂).

That wasn’t planned, obviously. Nicknames can evolve in unexpected ways.

If your DS doesn’t mind, then I think you’ll have to just suck it up.

You're on an uphill battle if you're going to get your knickers in a twist about nicknames!

Of course have a chat with your husband about it "calling him J gives me the ick, just call him Joe you weirdo" kind of thing but nicknames and petnames aren't really a conscious decision, they just come out.

No idea how old your child is but boy oh boy do you have a lifetime of unexpected nicknames and shortenings to come! I can't list any here for our kids but I'd not ever have predicted half the things they've been called by family and friends.

Don't you like that they have a relationship, part of which doesn't include you?
Maybe you expected that all parenting would be done jointly by the 2 of you? Or maybe all through you?

In most family relationships, you have some things that are joint, some that are Mum & son, some that are Dad and son. And that's all fine and loving.

You might want to have a deeper think about why exactly you have a problem with it. How were you brought up?

I use an initial for my (young adult) son. It's not the nickname I thought I would use - it just happened. It's not the same as his Dad's nickname for him. And we use a different shared nickname when we talk about him together. The nickname his friends and fiancee use is different yet again - not one that I even considered. It's how things work - a reflection of our individual and shared relationships with him.

Is it Pee?