I have been thinking a bit about nicknames lately and the nicknames we give our kiddies on our blogs. When I started blogging the original aim was to be much more anonymous – there wasn’t going to be any pictures of Monkey’s face and I didn’t even have my full name associated with it. At 9 months old Monkey was an actual nickname for our little baba and so it made sense for him to be known as Monkey on the blog.

Over time I realised how hard it was to keep the blog anonymous. I reached a point where I wanted to show Monkey’s face as seeing his enjoyment of playtime activities made more sense with the posts. Plus he was so cute and rather than baby spamming my personal facebook I felt my blog could be the place where I shared the cute pictures and gushed over him a little.

Then as I became more involved in social media my name became more relevant and with linking up facebook pages and google plus profiles I just accepted that my name was well and truly associated with the blog. But I still didn’t want Monkey’s real name to be associated with blog. Not everyone will understand why and maybe it is a little futile but I guess he hasn’t had a choice about the fact that is life is played out for the world to see online and by not sharing his name he retains the tiniest shred of anonymity. If his real name was written on the blog my fear is that one day when he is a teenager, or older, if someone were to google his name, they would find the entire record of his childhood.

No doubt the internet will be entirely different by then and who knows if the blog will even be online by then. Like I said, it may be futile, but I feel it is worth trying to retain his anonymity at least!

As I mentioned, Monkey is Monkey’s actual nickname so it made sense to call him that. But with Little Miss, she obviosuly didn;t really have a nickname the second she was born, but we did need a nickname for her on the blog. It took a while to decide and Little Miss works as LM are actually 2 of her initials. But we never actually call her LM or Little Miss at home. We do have a couple of nicknames for her but they are very much related to her name so I don’t want to use them on here.

So it does feel a bit odd sometimes referring to her as LM on here. I find the best nicknames are the ones that evolve naturally. I remember a girl at school saying she wanted a cool nickname and I was very much of the opinion that you can’t choose your nickname, they usually come from nowhere and sometimes they randomly stick. I have had a few nicknames over the years, Cazzabella, which I liked, Poodoo (because my maiden name was Pardoe) which I didn’t like, Paparazzi Pardoe because I always took photos but this ended when I got married, and one I am very glad didn’t stick was Flatuline from my charming roommate at uni!

So I am not really sure what to do, I do call her a cheeky madam sometimes, or cheeky minx or fidget pants  but am not sure how long they will hang around. We will stick with LM for now and then see if another nickname sticks in the future I guess!

Are your children anonymous on your blog? what were your reasons for this? If you do have nicknames, how hard were they to come up with?

My word of the week is Nicknames 🙂