Lexicography–Secret Names

The Daily Prompt was an easy one for me today. Our family makes up words–names, actually–for each member of our family. It started when my husband was a child. His father made up “secret names” for each of the 6 boys in the event of an emergency. Their secret name would be a code word to know the message came from a trusted person. I don’t believe they ever had to use the words, but the tradition carried down through the generations and now my children give “secret names” to their children. The names usually have something to do with their favorite things, or early sounds they made. For example, one of the original names is Sysifuscatchawatchafoo.

One of the names we created for our children is batterinahummerkeekai. Broken down into its component parts, our daughter was involved in T-Ball as well as ballet, twisted her fingers in her hair and called it “hummering,” and loved kool-aid, calling it “keekai.” Voila! A secret name!