We loved our names and still do.įrankly telling, these beautiful but weird pet names brought about a sense of propinquity and connection with your parents, cousins, uncles and aunts. But we never felt ashamed or annoyed of these names given out of sheer love and affection.
Funny punjabi pet names skin#
Pet names were sometimes also based on the child's physique and skin colour, like Golu for someone who is chubby, Kaale for someone who is dark, Minni for someone who was tiny when born but grew up to be a Maxi ( name remained the same though). Only then it added a personal and a warm touch to the invitation. These short and cute names ( having no relation to their original name) were so popular that even on wedding cards, along with the good names, their pet name had to be mentioned in the bracket. The best part was we as kids never realised that our elders had some meaningful and solemn names like Bal Krishna, Prem Chand and Arvind, for we had always heard Ballu, Montu and Chunnu. Those names stayed in the files like skeletons in the closet, till we took admissions in schools. I can go on and on for I had a huge family and everybody had a name apart from the ones written in their birth certificates. Punjabis are known for it), raucous Titu ( without lots of Ts in between, sounding it like Titttuuuu), a piercing Minniii and a loud Ballu. Being a hard core Punjabi, I cannot imagine a childhood without pompous Pummmmy ( putting extra stress on the middle alphabet to give more weight to the name. Where good names are sweet sounding and dignified, pet names are mostly meaningless, intentionally annoying and onomatopoeic like cuckoo or bubble. Pet names are also perpetual remains of childhood. Calling each other by pet names brings couples closer to each other. I, somehow had a liking for these terms of endearment and wished that when I got married, I too would come up with a nice pet name for my man. Moms in law were extra careful to not allow this kind of shamelessness in their patriarchal households.Īs I grew up and my elder cousins started getting married, they took a plunge by addressing their husbands with their good names or pet names like jaan and jaanu. Because calling your husband by his name, was so much against pati vrata patni norms. We lived in a joint family and my mom, taiji and dadi used the same name for their respective husbands, which surely created lot of chaos with someone else responding to that vague Suno ji. It was mostly interrogative, " Aye ji Sunte ho?" And the young and naive me thought that have all the husbands on the planet gone deaf?
I rolled my eyes and decided on sticking to the original one.īeing born and brought up in a Punjabi family, the only pet name I had heard wives using for their husbands was Suno ji. " Who is it on my wife's phone?" he innocently asked. But the reply that I got was a total let down. Influenced by my girl gang about giving a nice name to the man of the house, I too wrote a lovey dovey message to my husband starting with Honey instead of writing his good name ( as usual).