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Perpetrating Pet Names
Don’t have a pet name for your better half? Horrors! Check out this Cutesy Pet Name Generator. Just be aware that not all the pet names it generates are exactly “cutesy.” When I typed in my husband K—’s full name, it delivered Chunky Nubs. I didn’t try it out on him.
This different Sweetheart Pet Name Generator gave me Fuzzy Sweetie. A second try yielded Pretty Jewel. The third try was the charm, however, and henceforth K— will be my Slinky Kitty. Me—ow!
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Have you ever noticed that husbands and wives rarely call one another by their actual names? Instead, they develop a store of pet names they use instead. So, rather than, “Hey, Hank, bring me the rectal thermometer, will ya?” you might hear, “Snuggle-lumps, would you pass the salt, please?"
Pet names fall into one of three categories: Acceptable for Public Use; Marginal; and For Your Ears Only. The Acceptable for Public Use list is, not surprisingly, short. It includes dear, dearest, hon, honey and darling. By definition, AfPU names can be used at any time, in any place, although a discreet husband or wife still probably wouldn’t ask the office receptionist to “get my honey on the line.”
Marginal names are marginal mostly on account of being a little syrupy and a possible source of ridicule if heard by the wrong people. Love, my love, sweetie-pie, pet, honey-pot, sweet pea, sugar, baby and jewel are all marginal in my book. The irony of marginal pet names is that you don’t have to worry about your enemies hearing them. It’s your friends who’ll give you flak about them. Can you imagine the ribbing a man would get if his wife called him precious in front of his drinking buddies? He’d have to buy a round—or five—to get them to shut up. In fact, he probably couldn’t ply them with enough alcohol to get them to forget what they’d heard, and he might have to learn to answer to doll-face on his next hunting trip. Guys are just that way.
Finally, there’s the For Your Ears Only category. These are names that are too silly, explicit or simply demeaning outside of an intimate context to risk having them fall into the wrong hands (which would be any hands). Honey-bunny, love-muffin, studly do-right, jiggles, jug-jug, poodle, cuddle-wuddles, snookums, the rock, lambikins, pumpkin-poo, dumpling, spanky, Mr. Bear-buns, lovey-dovey, Superman, love-mama, and so on are all pretty much guaranteed to land anyone who uses them outside the bedroom in the doghouse. Woe betide the spouse who utters one in public, or worse, in front of a son or daughter. You can bet young kids will pull that weapon out of the hat at the most inopportune time, like at a parent-teacher conference, and older ones will just snigger every time you walk by until they turn 23 or so. The poor husband or wife who lets one of these names out of the bag can look forward to no snuggly-wuggly for a week, thank you!
The funniest pet name I’ve ever heard, hands down, comes from within the family circle. Evidently, two of my husband K—‘s grandparents called one another schmaltz. Schmaltz is an interesting word with many meanings, but in this context it basically translates to “fatso.” You’ve got to have a really solid marriage to use that one with regularity!
Conversely, the weirdest pet names I’ve ever heard are fairly common ones: Mommy and Daddy. Except when referencing your spouse while talking to your child, the incestuous implications of these names are just too creepy for words. Freud made a career out of stuff like this. To steal a quote from a man who was commenting in an Internet forum on the use of pet names in general, this is a level I don’t want ANY relationship of mine to get to.
Of course, not all the names husbands and wives call one another are endearing. Just take a gander at Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? For readers unfamiliar with Edward Albee’s vicious but classic play, it’s about a husband-and-wife couple who spend a gleeful evening verbally disemboweling one another, broken up by occasional bouts of strangling. It probably did more to discourage marriage in America than any other single thing in the last half-century. But properly speaking, the terms Albee used can’t be called pet names.
I’m not really particular about what K— calls me. In fact, except for my aversion to Mommy and my hope that he’ll never want to summon me by reciting anything from Albee, I have only one real criterion: it can’t sound as if it should be followed by, “Here, girl!”
But puddin’-cakes? I could be persuaded to come to that.
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