WIFESPEAK: So, what do you call your husband or wife?

The other day, a cousin took his wife-to-be to the village to spend a couple of days with our grandmother. He introduced the young woman as Betty, but when addressing her, he would use the popular endearment, baby, or baibes.

“Baibes, make chapos, shush loves them,” he would call out in mother tongue to Betty.

“Baby, have you seen my nail clipper?” he would say at some point, or, “Baibes, remember to pack maize before we go back home next week.”

By the third day of their stay, grandma was heard calling out to Betty;

“Mbabay? Mbabay? Where did you put the sieve?” Said in our dialect, it elicited lots of laughter.

Hubby realised the other day how unromantic we are when our youngest, now learning to talk, called his dad by name, instead of the usual ‘Daddie’. He had heard me on several occasions call his dad by name.

“I think you should start calling me Daddy, while I should call you Mommy, so the kids can learn from us,” hubby suggested.

NOT HIS PET NAME

“In your dreams!” I shot back. For your information, hubby is not his pet name, I only adopted it for this column. And no, I am not about to reveal our pet names to you!

Talking of which, I particularly dislike the pet names babes or sweetie. Way back in high school, a boy wrote a replica letter to three girls (yours truly included), referring to us, throughout the long flattering narrative as Sweetie and Baby.

This Romeo was a copy and paste genius, the only authentic thing he did was to address the envelopes with the respective girl’s name. I have since summarily dismissed any man who called me Sweetie, or Baby, no matter how handsome he is.

What is it about couples and pet names? A friend told me of this time she was having lunch in a busy restaurant in Westlands, only for the cool music to be interrupted by a woman’s shout;

“Babes! Someone has banged our car!”

Almost all the men stood up, already agitated, before a couple of them realised that their wives had not spoken. The bearer of the voice appeared, still calling Babes, who got up and rushed out.

I came across a research which shed some light on the use of pet names. It first cautioned against using a name that is offensive to your partner.

A pet name, the research explained, should be special, unique and private. If you are that couple who have those cute, naughty or weird names known and used privately between the two of you, then there is reason to celebrate. Apparently, it implies that you are very happy in your marriage.

That could be true, going by this couple I know, now celebrating 40-plus years in marriage. The husband is the only person who calls her by her maiden name, while she is the only person who uses his first name, while the rest of the world knows them as Baba or Mama so-and-so.

On the downside, if you are that couple that casually refer to the other as Babes or other common pet names, this might imply false intimacy. If anything, their name, or the short version of it, which is music to their ears, might hold more meaning to your spouse than the casual “Honey!” that you call out in the middle of a public swimming pool!

That said, I am no expert on this, but wonder about the relationship of those couples that never use each other’s names at all. You know those men who refer to their wives as You, Wewe, Nanii or Hey. In marriage, a rose by any other name is not a rose.