In the House of Chaos we occasionally have a word that is... an organically grown word. An evolved word.
For instance a diaper is called a "doobah." Why? Let see, why indeed? For some reason one day I told LaLa to go to the front room for a new diapey-doobah. She thought it was funny, to call her diaper a diapey doobah and started calling them that all the time... it has since shortened into plain old "doobah."
This is a decided change from what I used to call a diaper change when Birdie was wearing them. We called them "new pants" back in the olden days. We had a song for the changing of the guard back then...
New pants, new pants
Kalamazoo pants
new pants, new pants
for your bum
New pants, Eww pants
Whoopity-doo pants
new pants new pants
rum pum pum
New pants, who pants?
How do you do? pants
new pants, new pants
Tum tee tum
....sung to the tune of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which is strangely fitting now that I come to think of it. Hey Chitty, you Chitty, pretty Chitty Bang Bang!
All kids are "Bob." How did I get to the point where I am calling all three of my girls by the same rather truncated boys name? Hm.
There is a song that my Mom used to sing to us kids.... and here we go with the somewhat moronic lyrics again, but at least these aren't my moronic lyrics.
Clap, clap, clap your hands.
Clap your hand together.
Clap, clap, clap your hands.
Clap your hand together.
La la la la la la laaaaa.
La la la la laaa laaa.
La la la la la la laaaaa.
Clap your hands together.
Somehow, when LaLa was a baby the song went from "La la la la la la laaaaa," to "LaLa LaLa LaLa Loo." Then LaLa's name shifted to LaLa-Loo, and La-Loo-La. Then because it is such an oh-so-obvious thing to me... Babah Loo, Babah Looey, then Babah Luigi. Bob was the next step. I took that step and here we are.
Am I alone in my freakishness? Please, help me feel better about my insanity.* What are
your words? Pet names?
*As though I really care. I AM a freak. The End. I am, however, interested in your odd and organic words. Share. Please.
** Edited to add: I think that I meant Babaloo, only EEK!
18 comments:
I always liked the name Bob, I don't know why. I want to be named Bob.
About the only wierd word I have is "hoodad". Hoodad is a technical term. As in "the computer is busted and needs a new hoodad".
And I call my dog "Weiner", even though that is not her name. She answers better to Weiner than she does to her real name. Weiner is a Dachshund, so the name seemed fitting. My boy used to call her "wheat-wheat" when he was two because he couldn't pronounce "weiner".
Hi! Wheat-wheat is an adorable nickname.
The nicknames Lula Fru and Hula are kind of odd aren't they? And our short song:
"Hello Miss Lula Fru flying along!
Sing that Little Miss Lula Fru song!"
Kind of sounds like it needs a second verse. I have found I had many songs for my first, and the number has decreased with each kid. I am doing more yelling over my shoulder at the others and such while changing diapers and feeding! :)
We have so many made up words in our family I'm sure I couldn't list them all.
Some favorites are Smarshmallow, Shnoopny (the Peanuts dog) Fwi-Fwi for French fry.
Have you considered writing children's books? The diaper rhyme is EXCELLENT and so silly.
You could trump "Once Upon a Potty".
I was in your town this morning. I bought a nice Kmart vacuum. I also bought four clearance rack blouses and spent $20. Not bad.
I love nicknames... you are not alone.
Then there is "Bodeedoo".
One of the young nieces couldn't say Winebago. It came out as bodeedoo. And then in our family all motor homes were called that forever more
And mama called us all sows, even Sam. Mom
Hmmm. Peter and I are definately weird... We just call 'A' monkey. I call her monkeydoodle sometimes.
One strange thing we used to do was call a bag of cat litter 'the baby'. Before we had our baby... while carrying groceries into our apartment we decided that the cat litter was about the same weight as a baby. From then on we refered to cat litter as 'the baby'. I would say "Did you remember to get the baby out of the trunk?" If anyone heard us they'd want to call the authorities. A baby in the trunk!?
We shouldn't even bother naming our children real names in our house. They always pick up new ones with in two days of being home from the hospital.
It has started earlier for the bun in the oven. I call SHIM "Pudge"
I love all these invented names! My youngest son started his baby sister "Ella-baby" shortly after she was born. My husband shortened it to "Ella-bah." At first it annoyed me because he'd say it in this goofy voice. Since then it's just kind of stuck and now I use it too. The funniest part is she calls her doll "mmm-bah"
I started calling our oldest "Chicken Little" when she was going through a drama phase.
Now everything's chicken. They are called chicken nuggets, chicken tenders, chicken lips, any name is prefaced by chicken. They think it's funny. Usually. Sometimes you get "I not a chicken, I a Lala!" which is fun too.
I love that someone else has "nicknames" at their house.
Some words will just never be the same. Let me translate
Munch=Lunch
Woovie=Movie
Samich=Sand
Gocum=Popcorn
Shabie=Me (I think this is a cross between Baby and Shoobie--slang for "poop" around here...Nice.)
Lubie=the dog...who knows? Her name is Dusty.
LaLa/Peaches=Oldest DD
Messy Monkey=Youngest DD
Mac-a-me=Macaroni
Really, it is the English language we are speaking here.
My two girls have gotten second names that have nothing to do with their real second names...K's real name is K Grace, but we call her K Lou and J's real name is J Marie, but we call her J Mae. My SD is Ni Ni from the time B couldn't say her name right...it's just stuck. And the kids' blankets have names, B has Elephant Blankie, K has Rabbit Blankie (now we call her Rabbie) and J has Fuzzy Blankie. But mostly we just add a second part to everything. THis comes from my husband. He'll say, "what do you say, jay?" Or "I don't care, bear"
How comforting to know I'm just as freaky as all the rest of you moms...I love it!
My favourite random name is Fred.
My chidren are vessels made to hold a multitude of nicknames...behold:
Saskia
The Saskia
Sassy
Sass-Sass
Sassy loo
Sassamaloo
Lulubelle
Lulu
Moo
Moomoo bear/moomoo belle
Gurk
Chudge
Ellisif
The Elstress
Ellie
El-El
Elbow
Ellamaroo
Ellie bird
Ellie cat
maow maow ellie maow maow
Ellie belly
Ellie moo
Ellie roo
squishy love
smoodge
Oh we could go on for days. I'll invent new names for every occasion, and somehow they still figure out who is who and I'll be darned if they don't correct me when I get it wrong. Me. The mommy.
I just like riffing with those two - it gets funner all the time, because they've started RIFFING BACK! When did that happen?
I forgot one of my favourite ellie names:
ella bella
HA! Trust a bunch of people who write for fun to have a funky-buncha stuff to say and a great way of saying it.
Dread... did ya know that Lulabelle is one of LaLa's nicks? Did we have this conversation already? And down the street lives a girl LaLa's age who real and actual name IS Ella Belle.
Muey Organico!
You are not alone -- we have tons of made-up words for stuff. For example, a diaper is a "ditty." With our cats, we have a whole vocabulary -- we call them "fuzzes" (but pronounced like "foozes"; "stooch" is the term for when they sit with all four legs tucked under them, and "plunk" is when they lay with legs splayed to the side.
We have tons more, but I can't think of any right now.
I love that you willingly and freely change the English language. It's much more fun that way. I don't think language is supposed to be static anyway.
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