# Personal nicknames for things



## robert@fm (Jul 29, 2014)

I've been wondering, am I the only person (on here at least) who refers to 3D glasses as "Spectrespecs" and to anti-depressants as "dried frog pills"? 

(I must have been on just about every type of anti-D at one time or another, excepting MAOIs and Prozac.)


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## AlisonM (Jul 29, 2014)

Definitely with you on the Dried Frog Pills. Usually call the telly the 'haunted fish tank' and my container of crochet hooks and needles is my tackle box.


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## Caroline (Jul 29, 2014)

You're not the only person who gives things nicknames. Fizzy drinks we call burp juice, the vacuum cleaner is known as the J.Edgar Hoover, the light controller I use for the lights at work is known as Frank the Zappa.

I like spook specs for 3 d glasses. I wont tell you what I call metformin, but the smell when that windy thing happens can be unpleasant!


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## casey (Jul 29, 2014)

When my younger brother was little he called tomato ketchup' Zombies'. We never did find out why. I have names for my medication. My hrt tablet is called ' bluey', my statins are called 'stanley', my sleeping tablets I call 'caspers' and my antipsychotic pills are called 'queenies'. All together I take 4 tablets in the morning and 6 at night. I get quite confused at times as to which tablets I am supposed to be taking, so I find giving them names seems to help me remember a bit better. Sounds mad I know but it helps a bit. 

,


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## KookyCat (Jul 29, 2014)

I give things names, the sodastream is the fizz whiz, the microwave is the Ping maker and the insulin pens are life giver and sharp shooter.  Most of the other nicknames are a bit rude


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## Bloden (Jul 29, 2014)

We used to have a fridge-freezer called Vernon. I really can't remember why now, but everyone - lodgers, friends, family - used to call him that.

And our fat labrador Mary was The Flabrador or Flarey Mary. The tv remote is the plonka. Everyone's got their own secret language, it seems!

I like the haunted fish tank!


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## Flower (Jul 29, 2014)

My boiler is called Myrtle as it moans when it comes on like the ghost in 'Harry Potter' that lives in the toilets at Hogwarts. My crutches are called lightning conductors although I hope the odds of this happening are very very slim


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## Cat1964 (Jul 29, 2014)

We call the remote control the doofer the tumble drier is the tumbie and hubby calls our cat Fatty!


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## Northerner (Jul 29, 2014)

I once lived in a flat with a shower that I called a 'Horace'


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## jalapino (Jul 29, 2014)

I used to call my....ermmm.....lol....no I can.t!!!

Mr Snake!!! 

Opppsss it just slipped out!!! 

P.s Alan...that is my middle name ( Horace ).....at my wedding everyone laughed out very loud!!!! Pah!!! dam mum and dad giving me that bloomin name!!!


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## Northerner (Jul 29, 2014)

My middle name also begins with 'H', Ant - it's Howard. I was named after my Dad's best mate in the forces  I once worked with a guy whose name was Whilmer, which made me think of the Flintstones


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## AlisonM (Jul 29, 2014)

My middle name is the same as Fred's wife.  After my dad, bless him, why couldn't he be called Eugene or something?


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## Bloden (Jul 29, 2014)

jalapino said:


> I used to call my....ermmm.....lol....no I can.t!!!
> 
> Mr Snake!!!
> 
> Opppsss it just slipped out!!!



Put it away


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## jalapino (Jul 29, 2014)

Northerner said:


> My middle name also begins with 'H', Ant - it's Howard. I was named after my Dad's best mate in the forces  I once worked with a guy whose name was Whilmer, which made me think of the Flintstones



Arhhhhh!!! Howard is quite cool and suite's you Alan!! 

Horace was my granddads Name......I so got stitched up there!! 

Anthony Horace bleep bleep...pah!!!


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## jalapino (Jul 29, 2014)

Bloden said:


> Put it away



It is!!! 

But in my twenties that is what I called......it! lol


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## jalapino (Jul 29, 2014)

AlisonM said:


> My middle name is the same as Fred's wife.  After my dad, bless him, why couldn't he be called Eugene or something?



Lol...not as bad as mine!!!


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## zuludog (Jul 29, 2014)

Not exactly a nickname, but we refer to our dog (a lively german wire haired pointer) as 'The Furry Alarm Clock.


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## KookyCat (Jul 29, 2014)

I have two resident spiders, one is Horace and the other is Boris.  They skitter out when they think everyone's in bed and are incredibly cute when they realise they've made a mistake.  They play dead in two little balls on the floor.  I'll miss them when they're gone.

There's another naming issue I have, every animal/insect I meet on my daily walk has a name, flopsy and Mops the rabbits, Bad Boy and Brutus the dogs, sqizzle the squirrel, quick and quack the Mallards, sergent the sea gull who sadly is now in a grave marked with dandelions after foxy took a liking to him.  I'm pretty sure I didn't name random animals when I was gainfully employed...or construct a back story complete with accents now that I come to think of it 

My middle name is Yvonne, it's very distressing.


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## am64 (Jul 29, 2014)

Paracetamol is known as pari-ari in our house ....


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## Northerner (Jul 29, 2014)

KookyCat said:


> I have two resident spiders, one is Horace and the other is Boris. ...



You've reminded me of Simon the Spider, who built a web on the outside window frame of the house I lived in as a student  I wonder what he's doing now?


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## KookyCat (Jul 29, 2014)

Northerner said:


> You've reminded me of Simon the Spider, who built a web on the outside window frame of the house I lived in as a student  I wonder what he's doing now?



Building his glorious opus of a web at the pearly gates, wondering what happened to his first pet human I reckon


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## Bloden (Jul 29, 2014)

Northerner said:


> You've reminded me of Simon the Spider, who built a web on the outside window frame of the house I lived in as a student  I wonder what he's doing now?



I've got a spider living in each of my car's wing mirrors. They even came with me to the UK recently on the ferry.


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## trophywench (Jul 29, 2014)

My first husband's err, snake, was called Jerome.  I have no idea why.

He was actually very good at giving people names.  A couple we knew very well, and went on holiday with for quite a number of years, were called Wombat and Griselda.

And someone else, who wasn't a friend but a member of a club we belonged to, who used to drive everybody bonkers by knowing everything about everything and explaining it to everybody else even when they a) had no interest in it at all or b) they had invented the thing, or built it, or it belonged to them - he decided to call Captain Thrush.  This was taken up by everyone in our gang - after it was explained to them that he was .........

Oh no, it's far too rude .....


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## Annette (Jul 30, 2014)

Our caravan is called the Fuzzpig. And my OH calls everything alive (pigeons, dogs, etc) George.


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## Caroline (Jul 31, 2014)

My neighbour used to call pigeons Percy, my friend and I call a famous burger chain The Scottish place that sells large rain coats


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## robert@fm (Aug 4, 2014)

KookyCat said:


> I have two resident spiders, one is Horace and the other is Boris.



Any connection to  the 8-bit-era game _Horace and the Spiders_? 



am64 said:


> Paracetamol is known as pari-ari in our house ....



I used to call co-codamol "coco pops".


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## Sally71 (Aug 4, 2014)

We call the TV remote the doofer or the buttons.  Any foreign currency when we're on holiday is referred to as Dooflops or Spondoolies. Our burglar alarm is called Sidney (long story behind that one!). 

And a couple from our daughter: Pom Bears (crisps) are known as Head Offs (because when she was a tot she used to think it was hilarious biting their heads off) and Pringles are known as Grandma's Crisps because for some reason I only buy them when my mum and dad are coming to visit!


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## KookyCat (Aug 4, 2014)

robert@fm said:


> Any connection to  the 8-bit-era game _Horace and the Spiders_?



Yes Robert a very strong connection


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## Caroline (Aug 4, 2014)

Flower said:


> My boiler is called Myrtle as it moans when it comes on like the ghost in 'Harry Potter' that lives in the toilets at Hogwarts. My crutches are called lightning conductors although I hope the odds of this happening are very very slim



My boiler is named after the chap who fitted it so it is called Gary. My first word processor was called The Cadfael because it was a brother and unravelled the mystery of my hand writing. The second one was called The Derek because Derek Jacobi (who is a brilliant actor) played Cadfael in the TV series...


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## robert@fm (Aug 27, 2014)

Cat1964 said:


> We call the remote control the doofer the tumble drier is the tumbie and hubby calls our cat Fatty!



I have also called various cats Fatty; when I had a cat, my landlord was a housing charity called Help '71 and one of the governors was Lady Tuëma Pattie ("Tuëma" in one of the Indian sub-content's languages means "Dawn"), so I called my cat Tuëma Fattie.  Then I discovered he was a boy, but the name had stuck.  Fortunately, as far as I know Lady Pattie never found out. 

(Lady Pattie is the wife of former Tory MP Sir Geoffrey, whom I never met unlike his wife; surprisingly, to me at least, the two biographies I have found online mention only her art career and nothing else. And one of them misspells her name without the umlaut.)


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## Monica (Aug 29, 2014)

The tv remote is a doofer or zapper

I have an iRobot vacuum cleaner, which we call Robbie and "he" instead of "it"


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## Northerner (Aug 29, 2014)

Monica said:


> The tv remote is a doofer or zapper



It was a doofer in our house also - is that something you picked up in Yorkshire? What would it be called in Switzerland?


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## Monica (Aug 29, 2014)

Well, as Mike's mum is from Yorkshire originally, I guess he learnt it from her and I learnt it from him.

I don't know what it's called in Switzerland  but I remember I used to BE the remote control for my dad when we still had the old TV. We got a TV with a remote controller when I was about 12 (not sure).

I just about to google what remote control was in German, when it came to me. It's Fernbedienung. But I don't think we called it that. I would think my mum started to call it tapper, because my dad was always tapping it to see what's on all the channels. We also had a name for someone who's always channel surfing, never staying on the same channel for more than a few minutes - Flemming Finger (my dad's name)


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## Bloden (Aug 29, 2014)

Northerner said:


> It was a doofer in our house also - is that something you picked up in Yorkshire? What would it be called in Switzerland?



Le doofer, no? (if you lived in the French-speaky bit).


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## Flutterby (Aug 29, 2014)

Our TV remote is the Zapper.  The laptop is Lenny and the desktop is Clarence.  My mum and dad call their boiler Boris and the man who services it now calls it that too.


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## Monica (Aug 30, 2014)

Bloden said:


> Le doofer, no? (if you lived in the French-speaky bit).



No Bloden, I am from the Swiss-German speaking part of Switzerland. I grew up near Lucerne, Central Switzerland, not to be confused with Lausanne, which is in the French part


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## Northerner (Aug 30, 2014)

Monica said:


> No Bloden, I am from the Swiss-German speaking part of Switzerland. I grew up near Lucerne, Central Switzerland, not to be confused with Lausanne, which is in the French part



I've been to Lucerne - absolutely gorgeous place!  Also stopped off in Lausanne, but only for a couple of hours. I bought a Swiss Rail pass and managed Geneva to Zurich to Zermatt and lots of places in between, spent most of my time in Lauterbrunnen


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## AlisonM (Aug 30, 2014)

Is a doofer the same as a doovery, which is the same as a thingumajig? Or is it more of a watchamacallit?


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## Northerner (Aug 30, 2014)

AlisonM said:


> Is a doofer the same as a doovery, which is the same as a thingumajig? Or is it more of a watchamacallit?



No, it's more like an oojamaflip


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## Monica (Aug 30, 2014)

Northerner said:


> I've been to Lucerne - absolutely gorgeous place!  Also stopped off in Lausanne, but only for a couple of hours. I bought a Swiss Rail pass and managed Geneva to Zurich to Zermatt and lots of places in between, spent most of my time in Lauterbrunnen



It is! Would you believe me if I told you that I cried when hubby's mum told me the Kapellbruecke (Chapel bridge) had burnt down? Luckily, the fire brigade managed to save both ends, so they just re-built the middle bit again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapellbrücke

oojamaflip ? I thought it was a oojamajarflip, lol. Actually we use thingymajig too


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## Northerner (Aug 30, 2014)

Monica said:


> It is! Would you believe me if I told you that I cried when hubby's mum told me the Kapellbruecke (Chapel bridge) had burnt down? Luckily, the fire brigade managed to save both ends, so they just re-built the middle bit again.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapellbrücke



Hadn't realised that, how dreadful! I was there in 1989  So it wasn't me!


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## Bloden (Aug 30, 2014)

Monica said:


> No Bloden, I am from the Swiss-German speaking part of Switzerland. I grew up near Lucerne, Central Switzerland, not to be confused with Lausanne, which is in the French part



Ah, das doofer, ya?


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## Monica (Aug 31, 2014)

Bloden said:


> Ah, das doofer, ya?



LOL, ja Bloden, der/die/das doofer


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## robert@fm (Mar 20, 2017)

Now I have a TV, my TV remote control is called Frank (because it's a zapper!), though for some reason I never call any of my numerous other remote controls that.


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## RobK (Mar 20, 2017)

Paracetamol are called Monty's in our house, Paracetamol = Parrots = Monty Python Parrot sketch, And the hoover is called 'Nu-Nu', 

Weird I know but..................


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## Robin (Mar 20, 2017)

RobK said:


> And the hoover is called 'Nu-Nu',


Were you brought up on Tellytubbies?


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## robert@fm (Mar 22, 2017)

I call anything with chocolate and orange flavouring "clockwork orange" flavour (as evidenced in at least tow other threads here). Horroshow, droogs!


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## mikeyB (Mar 23, 2017)

My mum was a junior school teacher. One time she showed us a lads homework she was marking, an essay on what the kids had done on holiday. This lad had been to Devon, and saw "cilfs of great heightness". So now when we see those geologic structures such as Beachy Head, it's a cilf of great heightness. Even got my wife is in on this. So we get some funny looks when we are convulsed with laughter on some beaches, or watching Broadchurch.

That lad now owns a high end kitchen fitting company and drives a Range Rover, a motercar of great heightness.


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## sean penguin (Mar 23, 2017)

robert@fm said:


> Now I have a TV, my TV remote control is called Frank (because it's a zapper!), though for some reason I never call any of my numerous other remote controls that.



that's what my remote is called. maybe the'yre related, its quite a rare surname


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## mikeyB (Mar 23, 2017)

It's amazing to me that in the three years this thread has been running, the elephant in the room hasn't appeared-.the commonest thing we have nicknames for are our naughty bits. I'm not suggesting we start this, I just think it's an interesting reflection on the members of the forum. Or perhaps, who knows, how heavily it's monitored!


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## Rosiecarmel (Mar 25, 2017)

Literally everything in my flat is called 'errrrm that thing over there" no matter where in relation an object to me is, it is always "over there"

When I'm mentally unwell, my memory is the first thing to go and I'll forget names of basic items so I normally just describe them. I once asked my nurse to pass me that "pen looking thing that you write with..."

She just looked at me and went, "the pen?"

Yes lol!!


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## SB2015 (Mar 25, 2017)

We call cushions Hindus (Hindu Kush) and French francs were known as Dorises (the neighbours were called Doris and Frank) .


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