Name meme, stolen from Deborah.
If you call me…
If you call me Catie, either you have known me most or all of my life, or it is a learned behavior.
If you call me Catie-did, you are my little sister.
If you call me Catherine, you don’t know me very well, possibly at all.
If you call me Cathy, I will be incredibly annoyed.
If you call me Kit, you originally met me online, or through people who know me from online.
If you call me Mrs. Lee, I will tell you she doesn’t live here.
If I call you Lil’ Buddy in the very deepest voice I can manage, you’re my sister.
If I call you Mr. T, you’re my husband. If my mother calls you Mr. T, you’re her husband. The latter predates the Mr. T you’re all thinking of and the former is a learned behavior, so stop snickering. (God knows what I would’ve done if I’d married a man whose name didn’t start with T. Confused him, probably.)
If I call you by one of several names, indiscriminantly and to the great confusion of the people with whom I interact IRL, you are one of my many online friends.
If I call you by your real name or the name you go by in everyday situations, but feel obliged to stop and make note of the fact that this is so, or pause to define who you are in some other fashion (ie, “my Sarah”), you are another of my online friends.
If I call you by one of several names, many of which are very silly and some of which are simply not your names at all, you are probably a member of my immediate family.
If I almost always call you by both your first and middle names, probably to your vast irritation, you are one of the Young Malones.
If I call you Lima Bean, Renaldo, or Gonzo, you know who you are.
How annoying of you to leave out people who call you Kitty or Katschen, namely ME.
:)
-R
What about people you just call by their normal names without qualifiers? Or do I get a qualifier?
You in fact get a qualifier, Laura. You’re “our Laura”, as opposed to “my Laura”, who is, well. Someone else. :)
To make it even more confusing, a friend of mine is married to a Laura and has a son named Ben, so I can’t even specify “Laura and Ben” without having to qualify that!
Random, I’m terribly sorry. Obviously you need to call me Katya more often. :)
Katje!
You could call Laura (MY Laura) “Soly”, if you wish, now that she has an online persona. But Ben’s online persona is named either “Brzap” or “Glade”, so I think Ben is a better choice. Or ‘Those Canadians’. :)