H and I have nicknames for both of our kids and we still sometimes refer to them/call them those names, those names when no one else is around.
S had a name that he called me when he was a preschooler. I will not post it here but when I send him emails (primary communications when he is at school) I sign with the nickname.
Bird
I never realized until recently she loved when I called her that
This thread has made me smile and brought back memories. D has always been Chick or Chicky. But coming from a large family my siblings were Beanie (short for beanhead), Uncle Buck (from the movie as the free spirited uncle), Uncle Grouch (from the grinch and he was just such a grouch during our childhood) Miss Laura (from Imitation of life) and Spanky.
My kids at school are affectionately called my ducklings by everyone else and I am happily Mama Duck <3
A story not about a nickname my kid has, but one she bestowed. When D was just learning to talk, we had a family reunion. My mom often calls my brother by his full name, Gregory, and D evidently noticed. One evening I went to check on her a little while after putting her to bed, and found her standing up in her crib, quietly saying over and over to herself “Hi Grigry. Hi Grigry. Hi Grigry.” So he’s been Uncle Grigry ever since.
Not my kids nickname but my cousin. I grew up calling her Tawny but later found out it was a nickname. When her brother tried pronouncing her name, it came out as Tawny. She responded to it and it stuck. She loves that name.
When son was two we referred to him as “the terror of Street Name Court” between ourselves. He was a sweet kid but a normal, active toddler. We found it doesn’t take long when you forget to latch the gate to the backyard for a two year old to be found in the next door neighbor’s open garage close to a potentially falling on him motorcycle.
He was also called “Nickame (US version with the y at the end)-ji” by Indian born H and his grandparents when they visited us.
Somewhere along the way he, like many school aged kids, used the formal version of his name and we still use that today because we think he prefers it. Occasionally I hear others call him by the common nickname form of his name but I believe he always introduces himself by the formal version.
Anyone else get referred to by their formal first, middle and sometimes last name when parents were mad at them but otherwise were called by a diminutive? You knew you were in trouble when your whole name came out. I still dislike the use of my proper name- shades of disapproval and not who I am.
Two of my kids had temporary nicknames when they were born, until we agreed on final names. Not to give away where we live (small communities) but if we had lived in Texas, their temporary names might have been Austin Calvert and Guadalupe Corsicana. It was kind of fun.
Should have known we were headed for divorce when we had to stop after deciding just on first names, no energy to negotiate on middle names, so they each just got one actual name.
When they were older, I told the kids they could pick a middle name if they wanted. Only my son played around with it for a while and chose Homer as a temporary middle name! No idea where that came from, it was before Homer Simpson.
My husband had a silly name he always called my daughter; by the time she was 10, she requested he stop calling her that. She is now 29 and he still does it, just not as much; after about 15 years of trying to make him stop, she just gave up!
Bunkin which was short for Bunkinchunk.
Spooky Boo-Boo
Smoog
For the kiddo named xxxxx that rarely calls home, xxxxx-Who? is frequently used (but not a secret - our friends sometimes refer to him jokingly the same way). Or the shorter form, WhoBoy.
Sometimes we used to refer to our D as The Jeopardy Queen. Never in our wildest dreams did we expect her to be on the real show, but age 22 she was.
When my oldest son was a toddler and we visited my parents, he loved to crawl all over their house. When he would get too close to the stairs, my dad would smile at him and say, “No noooo!” After a few times of this, DS would say “No nooo!” whenever he saw my dad. So my dad was stuck with the nickname of “Nono.” Someone finally told me that “nono” means “grandfather” in Italian.
S2 would want to be swallowed up by a hole in the ground if I ever addressed him in front of his friends by his pet name…
Neither is a secret, but D2 is generally known as either The Wee One or The Cat Behind The Couch.
We’ve called D a bunch of different things over the years as terms of endearment, but none really stand out. His classmates called him by his initials or his first name (shortened) and his last name. He answered to whichever when he was around.
@mom2collegekids:
“True story: When S1 went to preschool, he told his teacher that his full first name was (insert about 10 first names, and Peter Pan was stuck in there as well). He insisted that he be called the whole string of names!”
Well, hello! Same thing here. I’ve never met anyone else with that story before.
^^ lol!!!
It was the craziest thing. S1 goes by two names. for example: Mark Charles (not his real name). Well, my brother (his Godfather) decided to call him James for some odd reason, so suddenly our son thought his name was Mark Charles James, and we just played along. When s1 went to preschool he somehow got quite imaginative and insisted that his name was Mark Charles James Peter Pan Matthew David Michael Stephen (plus a few more that I can’t remember.)
@Waiting2exhale I guess some little kids get quite fanciful about their names. 
S1 was quite the demanding baby so we started calling him Caesar. D was the strongest baby we have ever seen. Before her first birthday, she would toddle over to the kitchen table and do a pull-up to see what was on top. I started calling her Beanpot, after the Boston hockey tournament, nothing to do with the commonly used Bean derivatives.
S2 was supposed to be an 8 lb baby according to the ultrasound but came out 9.13. We called him Mumpo after the giant baby in the book “Geek Love.” He is now a normal size HS senior.
“My husband had a silly name he always called my daughter; by the time she was 10, she requested he stop calling her that. She is now 29 and he still does it, just not as much; after about 15 years of trying to make him stop, she just gave up!”
Snowball, my father has a silly name that only he ever used, but as I got older I too resisted it. When I had been married for a couple of years, H and I moved overseas. H had gone on ahead of me, and my Dad took me to the airport: it was hectic, I was frantic and he helped out labeling luggage, grabbing boarding passes, holding stuff, helping me find my way, etc. When I got off the plane in France, I picked up my luggage and all the name tags said " Silly name, Maiden name." I knew then that my father would always think of me as his little girl.
@lololu , that is something my husband would do! He still called her by the dreaded name, but has finally limited it in private, instead of in front of her friends. I think that is where she had the problem, not the name itself. My husband and I use to argue a good bit about his use of the name, not because it was offensive, but my daughter had begged him to stop. I felt like he didn’t care about her feelings, no matter how silly he thought they were.
Now, my SIL has a name he shared with my husband, so that gets used also; it is not complementary, but she is ok with it sometimes!