Growing up I liked my name. Lori means “Victory” though I only learned that recently. I actually have five names when you count my confirmation name and my maiden and married ones along with my first and middle name. The one thing I never had, though, was a nickname.

In fact, rarely is my name even shortened as names often are. How can you shorten Lori? You say “Lor” which my brother does and my oldest best friend, Lori. We call one another Lor, but no one else has ever ventured there.

My husband has a very cool French name which is difficult to pronounce properly if you didn’t grow up speaking French. When I met him he gave me an English version of his name, which I used until I realized that only one person in his world, his mother, ever called him by his real name. That just didn’t seem right to me. So I practiced saying his name to get it right. Meanwhile, one of my sisters started calling him by his childhood nickname, the one his siblings used, my other sister called him by the English version and my brother shortened his last name to “Gus”. If you didn’t know what was going on, you would have thought I had four boyfriends instead of one!

Nicknames have to be given to you by someone else. They are the ones who give them meaning, not always the meaning you might like. Maybe I dodged a bullet. I don’t know.

Wait! I remember now – I did have a nickname! Once in a while my mother would call me Lorelei! I don’t know why she did, but I loved it.

Do you have a nickname?  What’s the story behind it?

photo credit: Pavel Ahmed