Here’s an amusing little anecdote totally true.
After my nephew was born and as he was learning to talk, my sister proposed that we come up with a nickname for me that was easy to pronounce so he wouldn’t have to struggle with it. Something like Mookie or MuMu was her brilliant idea.
My name is not at all difficult to pronounce even if it has three syllables. It doesn’t lend itself easily to shortening or nick naming; thus all my life I’ve been called by my full name so I thought this was the most preposterous thing I’d ever heard and flatly refused to concoct something for the sole purpose of making things easier for him rather than the normal process all kids go through in learning to talk.
What I did agree to was that if he himself came up with some mangled up version of my name in his attempts to say it, I’d be totally fine with that regardless of what it was. (There are a lot of cute nicknames in families from children’s attempts to say them for the first time. But that’s a natural thing not a manufactured one.
So just let him deal with it and figure something out. I was not going to have something artificially concocted merely to save him from the “pain” of “struggling” to say my name. Its just not that difficult a name.
(It was her firstborn and she was spoiling him rotten in countless ways large and small.)
I’ll use a name very similar to mine to illustrate what finally happened. Lets just say it was Madeline, also three syllables.
The first time he said my name, he just logically shortened it to two syllables and it came out as MAD…LINE; a rather elegant solution for a two year old. Worked for me.
And I had a good laugh at my sister and all her angst about her poor child having to struggle with his Aunt’s name :)
And I still don’t have a nickname and still don’t want one. I like mine just as is.