 October Buzz
Nicknames. You ever stop to
think about how we came up with the use of nicknames? Well, lately I
have to explain it a lot and I don’t
even have an unusual nickname (or so I thought). Peggy, short for
Margaret.
How they ever came up with Peggy out of Margaret
is beyond me. I bet most Peggy nicknames are Margarets and they can’t
even tell you where that originated. Of course, being my provincial self,
I assume that everyone knows the Peggy/Margaret nickname, as it had been
the case most of my life; but lately I’ve found people looking at
me like I’m trying to pull a major con over them when I tell them
Peggy/Margaret are one and the same.
When you’ve used Peggy your whole life you sometimes
forget to use Margaret, your “real” name and let me tell you,
it’s
really important at an airport! Imagine trying to get through TSA! You
can’t assume that everyone, or anyone, is going to know that Peggy
is really short for Margaret. Recently, I had to have the good people at
TSA ask their fellow workers if anyone knew this and there were several
workers who knew lots of “Aunt Peggys” that were
really Margarets… so I got through. Whew!
Now, I’m just extra careful to set the default to Margaret
when booking any airline travel. Some of my credit cards say Peggy. Last
week, as I’m trying to check into this hotel, the clerk wouldn’t
take my card because it said Peggy (but the room was pre-paid???). The
desk clerk had to get clearance from her supervisor while this Margaret
was stewing. I wonder what would happen when the “Dicks” check
in and they try passing off “Richard” as their real name, I’d
like to be in line for that story!
I think we should have a dictionary of sorts
that gives us the answers or translations of nicknames. Scratch that,
there probably is one already. Actually, you can probably find the answer
in about 3 seconds on the internet. I know we all like to give pet names
to people or things. In college, I named my 63’ VW bug “Harley” and
later wanted to name my daughter Harley, but my husband nixed it because
she didn’t have
wheels. She turned out to be Erica. I call my son Maxwell, “Maxie”,
which he doesn’t like anymore but old habits die hard. I can’t
print my nickname for my mother-in-law or some of my other relatives, and
I’m sure they have a few choice nicknames for me as well! There is
a wonderful person who has worked here at Circle for so many years named
Jonathan Boyle. Years ago we nicknamed him JB, and not that long
ago I found out he HATES it, but as I said, old habits die hard.
Several years ago I started calling myself
the “Queen Bee’ because
I wanted some attention and now I can’t shake it. I have friends
and relatives that name their kids with 2 first names and never intend
to use the first, only the second. So why not just use one name
and avoid the annoying explanations that will follow your child at every
airport security for their entire life? They might just thank you for it!
Peggy Burns
Queen Bee
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September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
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