Sticks and stones can break my bones

but names can never hurt me? I know that is not true. Names can hurt.

Ms W's actual name was "Ciaranne". It was a combination of her father's name and her mother's name. She was proud of it but it did cause some problems. People sometimes assumed she was a boy, Ciaran. They did not know how to spell her name.

I called her all sorts of things and so did her father. For me she was sometimes "Ciaranne" but more often "Ms W" or "Whirlwind" or "Whirlybird" or many other things. If I did call her "Ciaranne" she would look at me and even ask, "What have I done wrong now?"

As she never gave away a book I know there will be one in her room which is a picture book about the terms of endearment for children in other languages. One of the terms is the French one,"Mon petit chou" - or "my little cabbage". I remember her giggling about that and telling me, "I am not a shoe!"

At school, perhaps because her own name is unusual, she took name calling very seriously. I never heard her call another girl a derogatory name. One of her teachers told me the same thing. One of the girls in her form is quite deaf and Ciaranne made it very clear that calling her friend names or teasing her about her hearing loss was not acceptable.  Oh, she could tease people - but it was never done with malice when I was around. I doubt she ever did it.  

She used "nicknames" sparingly. One of the other girls is known by her nickname even by the staff, "And that's all right because she likes it better than her name and that is a bit yucky" she told me seriously at the age of about seven or eight. (I am inclined to agree. I am not sure what the parents were thinking of in that instance.) 

She called the Senior Cat "Uncle J..." and used my full name until I told her she was old enough to shorten it if she wanted to do so. Her father was "Dad" most of the time but she almost always referred to him as "my Dad" because the relationship was so important to her. Her best friend was always referred to by her full name even though she used the diminutive when speaking to her.

And yesterday her best friend told me, "She always used names properly, so they didn't hurt people." How many of us could have that said about us?