What better time than Mother’s Day to reflect on our pet names for the ones we love? In the comments on my last blog entry below, Fruitbat 44 remarked, “Interesting article, but ‘The Evil Princess’???!!! Well, we all have pet names for our loved ones, and while I suppose ‘Snookums’ and ‘Honey-Sweetie-Pie’ might get a bit cloying after awhile, I do wonder if ‘The Evil Princess’ might be going too far in the opposite direction.”

Well, Fruitbat, I guess you kinda hafta know her… 🙂

Comments are definitely invited here, as this is the sort of discussion that cries out for collective wisdom.

One of my friends introduces his wife as “The War Department.” She smiles approvingly each time.

On the other hand, “Bitch” only works as a pet name if you are BOTH agreed that it’s an acronym for “Beautiful, Intelligent, Talented, Charming, and Humble.” If you aren’t in agreement on that, don’t be surprised if you feel a sudden need to come up with an acronymic explanation of why her pet name for you is now spelled b-a-s-t-a-r-d.

My Adult Supervisor is a podcast producer and self-styled Techno-Chick, while I am a reluctantly recovering Luddite. Our discussions of matters cybernetic generally end with me saying something like “Yes, Mensa Girl,” while she replies soothingly, “Have a banana, Mongo.”

A decade or so ago, I was having lunch with some prosecutors when the topic of a boys’ night out arose, and the question was posited as to whether our wives would allow it. One of the fellas said, “I’ll have to ask She Who Must Be Obeyed.” Another of our group – married at the time to an athletic woman almost six feet tall, who carried a gun and had put her share of aggressive males on the ground – chimed in, “I think it will be OK with the Amazon Queen.”

One of the assistant district attorneys looked at the chief DA and asked, “Do you have a pet name for your wife?” He smiled smugly and replied, “Oh, you mean Obedient Wench?”

It was then that the rest of us knew we had to kill him…

1 COMMENT

  1. Mas, you just about had me falling out of my chair laughing. Those stories are pure gold.

    It seems that reality is often much funnier than fiction :D.

  2. I’m the boss im my house, and I have my wife’s permission to say so…

    ;>)

    John Chick
    Monmouth, ME

    “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” –Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384

  3. “It was then that the rest of us knew we had to kill him…” That’s some funny shyte right there….

  4. Mr. A:

    Regarding pet names… be careful where you tread Mr. A; you’re in a minefield and don’t even know it. Pet name should be loving, not fantastically clever regardless of how apt it is. Thus, omit the following: BITCH (it makes me sort of reach for my gun), “the little lady”, “my better half (what’s that leave, the worst half?), all very patronizing. On the other hand, TechnoChick, Mensa maiden, are ok. My all time #1 favorite however, and highly recommended is “The Beloved”. If that one doesn’t cock her pistol, nothing will.
    Jo Ann aka: The Beloved

  5. Mas,

    What you and your friends didn’t know is that “wench” stands for Woman Entitled to Nights of Complete Happiness.

  6. Ummm, I don’t know, I kind of like the original Evil Princess- now I hope you treat her like one! (princess, that is) and if so, you could end up with an obedient evil princess (the obedience completely dependent upon the princess treatment rendered)

  7. I have always been fond of refering to her as my ‘current wife’. The, ‘Yes, dear’ thing used to work until I was accused of being patronizing, I have since using the term, ‘Yes, moose’. This statement insures that she knows that I am patronizing.

  10. Mas –

    “Well, Fruitbat, I guess you kinda hafta know her…”

    I guess so. 🙂

    My username (aka handle, aka nickname) comes from a pet name my wife used to have for me when we were courting. (She likes fruitbats.) When I got online many years ago I took “Fruitbat” as my handle, but since there were quiet a few out there I added the “44” to make my fruitbat unique.

    My wife and I do have other pet names for each other, but I’m not going to mention them on an open forum, as they make “snookums” and “sweetie-honey-pie” appear gritty and macho in comparison.

    I suppose that with a pet name, like a lot of things, it’s not the word but the love behind it that matters.

    Btw, that story of the prosecutors and the boys night out – pure LOL.

  11. Mas,

    I’m on my third marriage( 21 years). I tell my friends that the proudest day of my wifes’ life is the day I gave her her number, ” Honey, you’re number three!” She likes it. At my twenty year high school reunion she went around saying, ” I’m his third!” I asked her why, and she said, ” I don’t want them to think I’m either one of the first two.” It might take a while, but it’s great when you get a Keeper!

  12. My dearly beloved goes under the nickname of “Boss” which got me in trouble one day at a former job when she called me and ordered me to buy some grocery or other. I replied “Yes Boss!” and my boss at work turned around and I said “Not you, my real Boss on the phone.” He was not amused!

    I read in Michael Yon’s Facebook page that many in the military overseas are calling their wives “Domestic Six.” denoting the CO of the household 🙂

  14. I tried “wife 1.0” a couple of times until I was threatened with being rebooted. Yes, Dear is still a pretty good stand by.

  15. “My Lady” seems to work for me on wife #3 as a term of endearment. When necessary I defer to the decisions of “The Lady” as to my extra curricular appointments.

    In my 30+ years of different wives and different LE assignments I too have had moments of epiphany when “we” knew severe consequences were in order for those that upset the status quo. Having access to a Florida swamp nearby has its advantages.

  16. My wife bakes, fights, and shoots, all with equal aplomb… indeed, my best BUG is the one on *her* hip: my little Angel , “The Redhaired Devil”…..

  17. Being pseudonymous (working in a government-funded job, so I need a little bit of plausible deniability), I’ve always called my wife Milady. “My young lady” and “beautiful lady” always works.

    OTOH, she is notorious for saying that “we” need to do something that I end up doing, to the point that our neighbor has started calling me “we”. Of course, then his lady assigns him a task too… 🙂

  18. Mas:

    This column was so funny, I was reading it, in sections, to my wife, Julie, in between laughter. The next paragraph was better than the preceeding in each case.

    Julie’s pet name is “Little Sweet,” and to an outsider, I suppose it may sound sort of patronizing, but as a variation of Sweetheart, it works and she likes it, which is all that matters!

    We now have “Baby Sweet,” our 2 1/2 year old daughter, Dagny. Yes, the name Dagny came from the book by Ayn Rand.

    Regards,

    Shawn

  19. I once took my wife to a coal mine unreclaimed site to plink. She is a Ft Knox born army girl who had ROTC. She drove us there in her F 150, after we both shot for a while, I put out used 410 shotgun shells for her to shoot with my Marlin 39A. Two gentlemen of buckskin persuasion pulled up next to us to sight in a musket. They watched for a while. Eventually I saddled up to my Yes Dear and said, if they find out you can cook too, we may start hearing the strains of Deliverance’s Dueling Banjo’s!