Friday, December 4, 2009

The Naming of Toys

Lately, the Pumpkin has been very into names. When you ask her what her name is, she tells you her nickname (the one we use regularly). If you ask her what is her full name, she will tell you her full first, middle and last name. She will do the same for the Pookie, Londo and me, although sometimes she says Daddy or Mommy as our first names with our middle names and last name.

I once wrote about how she named a stuffed duck toy Mr. Duck. That was the first toy that the Pumpkin named. Around that time, I asked her what her baby doll’s name was, and she said Baby. I wasn’t sure she was really naming the baby doll so much as just calling it a baby. (It turns out, she was indeed naming the doll, and that cute name has stuck.) But those names seemed pretty basic to me, like she was in a very early stage of understanding names.

Along with her recent understanding of peoples’ names, she has also started coming up with more imaginative names for her toys. A few weeks ago, she was playing with these four little toy dogs she has and she named them. The red one is Fireman. The purple one and yellow one are Crumple and Sissy, although which is which sometimes changes. The green one’s name, however, keeps getting changed. I’m not sure why. Sometimes the name sounds like Cyanide and sometimes it sounds like Dinny or Binny. But the other three names are absolutely consistent. In fact, the little dogs were put away for a week, and when she rediscovered them, she still called the red one Fireman and the purple and yellow ones Crumple and Sissy. And I still have no idea where she got those names!

And now, she has named her other baby doll. Last weekend, she was watching a show with flowers who are animate. One flower’s name is Marigold. Well, she suddenly decided that to name her other baby doll Marigold. I love this name. It’s so pretty, and I’m really fascinated that she took a name she heard and applied it to her doll because she liked it. So now if you ask her what her baby dolls’ names are, she tells you that one is Baby and one is Marigold.

I remember loving to name my toys and stuffed animals, which is why I’m probably so excited about this stage in her development. I’ve always loved names and think the naming of things is important. It’s pretty awesome to see the ability to name things develop in my little girl.

4 comments:

Marianne said...

Funny story from my childhood... I had a toy cat that I wanted to name "Donald Duck." My parents said that it wasn't a very good name for a cat, so I renamed it "Pussy." And that's the name that stuck. I think they would have preferred Donald Duck.

Cloud said...

Our Pumpkin has only now started naming things. She named one of her dolls Ellery, after a girl we met at the park. For the longest time, that doll was just "big baby". We also have "birthday baby" (received as a gift on her birthday), "little baby", "purple baby", and "new baby". I'm looking forward to getting some better names.... I also remember naming all my dolls and animals as a girl. In fact, Ellery's first name was Julice- she was my doll, and for some reason, I decided to name her Julice, which is not even a real name (as far as I know).

Jan said...

Have I told you about the Munchkin's naming of things? Totally off-the-wall, I have no idea where they came from names.

We started with Baby, then Dolly, which were really names I came up with. But once she started naming things ... we had:
Meelosh (the imaginary friend)
ToTo
Himba
Himby
HoHo (Meelosh's older brother)

Imagination is awesome -- I LOVED going someplace in the car and having her look out the window and say matter-of-factly, "oh, yeah, that's where Meelosh goes to church."

Sadly, over the last year, Meelosh and her family (HoHo the brother and the mom -- Jennifer, of all things) have 'moved away' (the Munchkin told me this, then amended it to say that now that she spends so much time thinking about gymnastics, she doesn't have so much time for Meelosh -- perceptive little mutt) and we rarely talk about them anymore. I kind of miss them.

Burgh Baby said...

I love asking Alexis what things are named. She usually names things after her favorite people, but sometimes she just plain makes up a name. For example, Dahlia (pronounced like dolly-ya) is her turning the word "doll" into a name. So fun!

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