In-laws using Nickname I hate

[Abba21]

I recently had a baby and picked her name. It’s short and sweet. Now my in laws have started calling her by a nickname that’s longer than her name and I can’t stand it. Is it weird to decide to call a baby by a nickname when it’s not your baby? I think it’s crazy and it’s driving me mad. Terms of endearment are lovely and of course always welcome. Like my mil calls her little hen. So cute, but I can’t stand the nickname his family is using and he’s even started using it too :/

You can't control a nickname. Wait until she goes to school she could be called something completely different. People will have their own relationship with her and that will include what they call her.

OP, my name is Melanie, so my nickname is Mel. My Aunt used to call me Melly, and I cringed every time I heard it! I know to her, it was endearing, and it was different and only she called me it (thank God!). As I got older, I used to correct her to Mel and she'd just ignore me and still call me Melly!! I absolutely adore my Aunt, so I put up with it simply because it was her calling me the name. The odd thing, my Aunt passed away in 2020, at 81, and now I miss that bloody nickname!! I do understand why you dislike Rennie though, as the heartburn medication is exactly what I thought of! Could you not say to them that is sounds like your calling her by a medication name, and you'd appreciate it if they just used her name!

I'm sorry OP, that does sound frustrating. But you could take comfort in this beautiful saying : "A loved child has many names".

Maybe they had a bad experience with the kitchen company so want to avoid the name Wren. It's not everyone's vibe.

I hate the name Wren, especially for a baby girl. It's very cold and clinical sounding and a kitchen company, so she'd be Rennie to me too! Wren in my head is Ren, so Rennie makes sense. This wouldn't bother me much. My family made it clear they don't like my dc1's name and gave a nickname, he goes by that all the time now and in secondary school put the nn as his given name. I really didn't like it at the time but it grew on me over time.

My son is called Hugo and my sister only calls him Hubert. I think it's so funny and cute even though I really dislike the name Hubert 😆 You will get used to the nicknames!

Why can’t you just share with us what the nickname is they’re calling her? Don’t have to be so precious about it

@Dreamgirl97 , why have you commented on an old thread?

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I’d her name Nell and they’re calling her Nelly, or Meg and they’re calling her Meggy?

@GiddyDog , take no notice of my stern comment to a pp. It might still be an issue for the OP.

It’s going to happen and I suspect could become her nickname at school as well. (My friend’s GD is Wren and known as Wrennie by her school friends - it just happened ) There will undoubtedly be bigger battles at some point with your in laws so this isn’t a hill I would want to die on.

My parents gave me and my brother names that they thought there was no diminutive of, and my brother's friends also addressed him by the first syllable of his name through childhood. My mother herself used a diminutive of mine when I was small.

You can't stop this IMO.

That was what people nicknamed me at uni :) No one calls me that outside of that friendship group though so I just accepted it as a term of endearment even though I prefer my name as it is.

It still tickles me (as a 39 year old) that my name is now fairly popular 😅

Could be worse: could be Birdie or Tweetie.

Careful, he could tell OP that when she uses Wren he thinks of the kitchen manufacturer or, more obviously, a bird.

Was it a name you and DH both agreed on, OP? If it is, surely you had the talk about what nicknames were going to be acceptable for you both to use?

If her name is Elizabeth and they've started calling her Beth when you prefer Lizzie, I get why you wouldn't like that. If her name is Bella and they've started calling her Bellaboo I would leave it. The way I see it, is that it's a term of endearment. Even if you hate it, it's coming from a place of love and you want that for her. They love her and they're coming up with a name for life - her friends at school will do the same.

It's a lovely name. And adding a Y or IE to the end of a name that doesn't have one already is a very common way of nicknaming someone. I'm sure they won't be the only ones to call her that.

Of course ask that they don't but I personally wouldn't. She'll say if she doesn't like it once she's old enough to care.

The OP literally does this in her second post - from 7 months ago!!!