Before Fiona was born, we already knew that we wanted her middle name to be Chenoweth. It’s an old family surname from Abi’s side of the family, and because it’s so unusual, we could use it equally well for a boy or a girl. (We didn’t know Fiona was going to be a girl.)
“Chenoweth” also gave us a useful placeholder name to use for her in utero. It was the name we used when we talked to Alex about the baby in mama’s tummy, and by January he was quite thoroughly drilled on the idea. Then we changed the rules on him, and told him that Chenoweth would be getting a new name when she was born. Alex seemed to grasp this concept, too, but when Fiona actually arrived and got her new name, Alex thought she was getting her new name in addition to her old one. He started calling her “Chenoweth Fiona”.
Well, so did we. If you’re a parent, you’ll be familiar with the way that families develop their own idioms and figures of speech. You’ll say something to the child, and the child will misinterpret it, turning the phrase into something almost unrecognizable, but terribly cute. Then you start using the altered form of the phrase, reinforcing the mutation, and a new “family phrase” is born.
“Chenoweth Fiona” turned out to be quite a mouthful for Alex, though, and he quickly started abbreviating it to “Che-o-Fiona”, or “Chuffiona”. And recently I’ve started calling her “Chuffy” just for short.
It’s strange how these things go.