My "Aunt" Name

On my Mom's side of the family, everyone has a nickname. Furthermore, these names change over time, adapting to the linguistic capability of the speaker's mouth. My Mom and aunts have nicknames worn smooth by the lips of a generation of adoring children, a loving erosion that can take a cheerfully rude teasing name bestowed by an older sister and change it into something not only benign but totally random. Thus "Pubescence" changes over time to "Pubie" where it is passed in relay to my older brother and me and becomes "Aunt Noobie" and then is passed to my cousin and her brother to become "Aunt Noonie," and finally "Noona." Like the bunny in the story The Velveteen Rabbit became real by being loved, so too these seem to be the real names that my Mom and her sibs were meant to have, so much so that Noona is known both personally and professionally by that name, and my Mom has the name "Birdie" on her name tag at work. In fact, "Lemony" is my childhood nickname, and as you, dear reader, must have noticed, I have embraced it as my identity on this blog.

So now it's my turn. Dilly, my 3 1/2 month old niece, can already make an amazing number of sounds and squeals, and I know that the day is not too very far off (a year?) when I will receive an aunt name of my very own. I do have some say: I draw the line at "Auntie Em," for instance (just as I suspect my brother and I never addressed my aunt as "Aunt Pubie!") It probably won't be Aunt Lemony, because my immediate family doesn't call me that, just my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Within the immediate family there are still plenty of names to choose from. (My brother was less permissive of our messing with his name, but that doesn't mean that he won't have kids calling him Uncle Shugie [short for Sugar Bear] some day!) As for my aunt name, we'll just have to see what Dilly says.