Name My Family! (updated at bottom)

May 22, 2008 by chezperky

There’s a reason that I use real names on my blog, and I’m going to let you in on the secret. Are you ready? Are you really SURE you’re ready? Are you sitting down?? Okay, here it is: I’m not witty. I am not good at coming up with aliases. I’m not creative or funny or interesting. I have a hard enough time coming up with real life things to say, let along making shit up.

I mean, come ON people, do you know how frickin’ long it took us to come up with actual REAL names for our children? We had NO names for our children before they were born! The night before they were born we FINALLY came up with a list of about 20 girl names that we didn’t hate, but no actual combinations of names, and it wasn’t whittled down to, oh, you know the actual names we’d be using (in part because we didn’t know if we’d be having 1, 2, or 3 girls). And hello? We had zero, count ’em, ZERO boy names picked out. Zilch. Zippo. Nada. Niente. Nuttin’ Honey. We were blank slates praying that we didn’t have three boys the next morning because we didn’t have a single boy name, and I gotta tell you, when Baby A came out and Doc M said, “Baby Boy!” I was sweating BULLETS! Seriously! What if Baby Boy A was starting a trend! What if there were THREE of them!?

Whoops… getting off track here, and giving away the details of that elusive birth story I still haven’t written for you. See, gotta keep you guessing so you don’t stop reading. I swear I’m planning to write that someday…

Ahem. Back to the present.

The point is, I’m not witty. I’m not interesting. I’m not creative. I can’t even come up with REAL frickin’ names for my kids. I didn’t even have a name for my son until he was a week old (and hell, he was called “Hey you” until he was nearly six weeks old… but that was because he didn’t officially get his name until his bris, but AGAIN with me being off track!). So I never used aliases on this blog. I did for a while refer to Seth as “S” but I got lazy and started calling him Seth because, well, that’s his name. I do pretty consistently refer to J as, um, J. I’m better about that because he’s not legally mine… I’m his legal guardian, but not his custodial parent, so I try to be careful about that. But I get sloppy about initials, so I don’t like sticking to initials. For the triplets, initials get hard because Seth has the same initial as Sam and well, again with I’m sloppy about initials.

Mel suggested that I go back through entries and remove names to make me more comfortable with the information I’ve got out there about me, and while it isn’t the PERFECT solution, it’s a start. But WHAT TO CALL MY FAMILY MEMBERS? I can’t think of a favorite book that has FIVE FAVORITE CHARACTERS (one for Seth, and each of my four children). Same goes for a movie.

So, you, dear readers, are now charged with finding aliases for my kids and my husband. If I had twins, they could be frick and frack. But I don’t. So go forth and be witty. Be creative! Be smarter than me!

Me personally? I think I’ll stay Karen. Or maybe just Ms. Perky. But it’s not like Karen isn’t a pretty anonymous name. Do you know how many Karen’s were in my elementary school? A frick-load, that’s how many. And if you knew my middle name, you’d know there were a lot of Karen-plus-my-middle names floating around too. There were THREE of us in my graduating high school class. THREE. So I can live with my lack of anonymity with regards to my name. But as for the rest of my family? They need witty aliases. And you guys (girls?) are all WAY FUNNIER THAN ME.

So I know I’ve got lots of lurkers who rarely comment and this is your chance to shine. I don’t block anonymous comments, so please feel free to be funny! Or even to be not funny. But post something!

EDIT: Just a reminder: There are FOUR children to think of, not just the triplets. Triplets, plus J, plus husband.

Posted in blogarama | 42 Comments

42 Responses

on May 22, 2008 at 1:56 pm | Reply Meghan

My first thought was Huey, Dewey, and Louie…but then I remembered that they were all boys…

sorry, not at all creative either
on May 22, 2008 at 2:19 pm | Reply Shelby

Sorry- can’t help you here! I can’t even come up with aliases for my lot, which is why I always use their names too. One of these days…
on May 22, 2008 at 2:21 pm | Reply erin

Since Abby has a prominent “B” sound in her name, and Ellie has an “L” sound, I would pick cute names that you can remember with a B and an L. As for Sam, I’d go for an “M” name, but that’s less obvious. As for the actual names to go with the initials… not sure yet. 😉
on May 22, 2008 at 2:27 pm | Reply Rona Michelson

Years ago when the plane hijackings had begun, I was flying with my 4 little children who had obviously Jewish names. I gave each of them an alias starting with the same letter so that if the unthinkable happened, we all would go to our aliases. (Yeah, I forgot about the fact that a hijacker could ask for your passport…) Anyway, I vote for Agnes, Elsie, and Satchel.
on May 22, 2008 at 2:30 pm | Reply April

Winken, Blinken, and Nod for the triplets, DH (Dear Husband) for you husband. No idea on your other boy though.
on May 22, 2008 at 3:14 pm | Reply Anonymous

Faith, hope and love
on May 22, 2008 at 3:16 pm | Reply Anonymous

Doc, Grumpy, Happy, sleepy, bashful, sneezy, dopey.
on May 22, 2008 at 3:17 pm | Reply Anonymous

Manny, Moe and Jack
on May 22, 2008 at 3:20 pm | Reply Familyof2

How about Inken, Blinken, and Nod for the children?

As for the husband…well…I don’t know.

Now see if there were 7 of you…say had you had quads instead of triplets you could do the 7 dwarfs…Sleepy, Happy, Bashful, Grumpy…etc depending on the mood of each child, and then the momma and the daddy 🙂

http://www.familyoftwo98.wordpress.com
on May 22, 2008 at 3:21 pm | Reply Anonymous

Uno Dos Tres
on May 22, 2008 at 3:21 pm | Reply Familyof2

PS…must really read comments before making my own…but you now have 2 votes for Winken, Blinken and Nod 😉

http://www.familyoftwo98.wordpress.com
on May 22, 2008 at 3:22 pm | Reply Anonymous

Trip A Trip B Trip C
on May 22, 2008 at 3:56 pm | Reply Rachel Inbar

Bert, Nan, Flossie & Freddy? I hope Seth won’t mind being Richard…
on May 22, 2008 at 4:26 pm | Reply Anonymous

Jan, Marsha, Greg and Bobby
on May 22, 2008 at 4:27 pm | Reply Anonymous

Ginger, Mary Ann, The skipper and little buddy
on May 22, 2008 at 5:11 pm | Reply meghan

I don’t use our real names on my blog. Since our older son has a hereditary illness, my husband owns his own business, I have a highly Googleable real life, and triplets made us more notorious, I like to be a little incognito.

Anyhow, I use names I wish I could have named my boys but that my husband didn’t like or that didn’t sound good with our last name. Maybe just pick names that start with the same first letter, so you don’t get too confused when you’re writing about them?
on May 22, 2008 at 5:21 pm | Reply Amber

There’s 3 girls – I’m including you 😉 – and 3 boys and you are all friends so…

Ross, Rachel, Joey, Phoebe, Monica and Chandler.
on May 22, 2008 at 6:51 pm | Reply Kitty

There are always the Jane Austen heroines/heroes…plenty of personalities to match up w/the kiddos. You can always offer up adjectives, adverbs, or nouns, as a name – you tend to describe Ellie as “Smiley”, Sam as “Hungry” or “Vortex” (can’t fill him up), etc. Good luck.
on May 22, 2008 at 6:57 pm | Reply Anonymous

Brenda, Kelly, Dylan, Brandon
on May 22, 2008 at 8:49 pm | Reply Karen

From a fellow Karen, there were plenty of them in my class too. And my middle name is Lynn. How unique!
on May 22, 2008 at 9:02 pm | Reply Anonymous

These aren’t very original and the first two I shamelessly stole them from other blogs: Squeaker, Sweet Pea, Sweetie Pie, Peaches, Flipper, babycakes (BC), Teenybopper (TB), Angel, McSugar, Jabbers, Neeny, Shortstuff, Smiley, Munchkin…etc.

When I’m emailing about my coworkers I pick what a consider to be out-of-date names, I keep the first letter of their real name so I don’t get too confused, “Melissa” became “Myrtle” my boss became “Starlet,” the CMO became “Randolph” (Rand for short) and so on.

Just a thought but what does J think his name should be? Is there a name he always wanted (I dearly wanted to be a “Kelly” growing up)? Or a super/hero that he likes?
on May 22, 2008 at 9:25 pm | Reply Anonymous

Will, Grace, Jack, Karen
on May 22, 2008 at 9:26 pm | Reply Anonymous

Theo, Rudy, Vanessa, Denise
on May 22, 2008 at 9:29 pm | Reply Anonymous

Fred, Barney, wilma, bam-bam
on May 22, 2008 at 9:39 pm | Reply Chris

I vote for Tic, Tac and Toe for the triplets. J can stay J since you’re already used to that. Let’s make your husband MP for Mr. Perky 🙂
on May 22, 2008 at 11:00 pm | Reply erin

I also vote for keeping J as J, and DH for dear husband…
on May 22, 2008 at 11:08 pm | Reply Anonymous

Peter Pan has 5 characters! Wendy, Tinker Bell (or Tink, for short), Peter, Michael, and John.
on May 22, 2008 at 11:37 pm | Reply My Reality

I named my blue bird Blue Bird. I am so not creative. I don’t know what I will do when I actually have to name a child. I can’t even possibly think of creative names for you!! If you didn’t want to use your name, SuperWoman would be totally appropriate. And I mean that!
on May 23, 2008 at 12:01 am | Reply illahee

i like mr and mrs perky. that’s cute! why not change j to jay? for the babies….hm. obviously, i’m not very creative, either. at this point, it would be really difficult for *me* to keep them straight if you changed their names to aliases. *blush* so, just to put something out there, how about superbabygirl, fearless sidekick and miracleboy?
on May 23, 2008 at 12:22 am | Reply Drama Queen

I also decided to use aliases on my blog recently and it was a pain in the arse to go back and change them. Here’s my vote. Stick with Seth and Karen for you guys. I agree with the thought of thinking of another name that starts with the same letter as the babies actual names so you don’t get confused as to who is who when blogging. Good Luck!!
on May 23, 2008 at 2:29 am | Reply mommo4.5

Seth: Mr. Perky or The Mister
J: J-boy
Abby: Babs or AB or Bebe
Ellie: Lee or EL or LE or Leelee
Sam: B-Boy (for baby boy) or SM or SAM (let people think it’s an acronym)
on May 23, 2008 at 10:42 am | Reply Anonymous

Use everyone’s Hebrew middle names?

Get used to using initials for the children and refer to Seth as “Husband” or the like?

Aleph, Bet, Gimmel, Daled . . . ?

Leave it as is?
on May 23, 2008 at 12:35 pm | Reply Helen

I think it’s always easier – for you and for your readers – to use real names. People names, like proper names. My usual rule of thumb is that all of my aliases are names that start with the same letter as the person’s real name, so Abby would be Alice, Sam would be Steve, and so on. I find it easier to keep them straight in my own head, too!
on May 23, 2008 at 3:49 pm | Reply irishdo

peeking out from lurkerdom….

I say do with some trait of everyones. If one of the babies smiles more than others they could be smiley. J could be Mr. Big since he is the big bro. I think if the names were just random, I would forget who is who, but I am not that bright sometimes either.
on May 23, 2008 at 8:16 pm | Reply Anonymous

Nes Gadol Hayah and Sham (or Poh).
on May 24, 2008 at 12:51 am | Reply Carol

I gave up trying the nickname thing, I was just no good at it. So sorry I can’t help you. But I’ll be excited to see what you come up with.
on May 24, 2008 at 2:00 am | Reply Erin

I’m so creative that I’ve managed–initials. Whee. So I won’t be any help here, but I’m enjoying reading the other suggestions!
on May 25, 2008 at 12:45 am | Reply DC

Hi there! I’m getting an early start on NaComLeavMo and your post cracked me up!

I (finally!) started by own blog. I hope you can stop by and check it out if you get a chance.

http://lupuspie.blogspot.com
on May 25, 2008 at 2:38 am | Reply DC

Just wanted to say thanks for the heads up re: PCOS Baby. What a great blog!

BTW . . . Your kids are adorable!!
on May 25, 2008 at 8:44 am | Reply triLcat

Buffy for Abby, Dawn for Abby, Xander for Sam, Angel for J, and you and hubby can be Giles and Joyce.
on May 25, 2008 at 9:04 pm | Reply Hayley

I read a blog elsewhere where the author refers to her children as Little Madam (her eldest child), Little Nutter (the middle child, who is autistic) and Tiny Flirt. I think this is really cute.

My first thought for the children was Peter, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, but as your triplets are not all girls, it doesn’t really work! However, you could use Peter, Benjamin, Flopsy and Mopsy, potentially. Seth could be Mr McGregor…

Actually, I’m quite liking the Beatrix Potter theme here… You could check out this site http://beatrixpotter.anichestore.com/list-of-characters which has a list of Potter Characters; the girls could be Jemima and Rebecca after the Puddle-duck sisters, for example…
on May 29, 2008 at 11:55 pm | Reply Michelle

Harry = J
Ron = Sam
Hermione = Abby
Ginny = Ellie
Albus = Seth
if you like Harry Potter, that is…