Verbal Spewing

I recently read a developmental milestones article about 9 month olds.  It said that at nine months, babies start to recognize their names and that you should refrain from calling them anything but their name.  This could prove to be a problem for Harper. 

I inherited my grandfather's habit of nicknaming and "verbal spewing".  I can vividly remember sitting at the lake with Papaw as he read the paper and hearing him say without eyes leaving the page, "Is your name Brookee-doo, Doo-dee-roo, Doodle-ee-doodle-ee-doodle-ee-roo, Roo-tee-too-tee-mou-dous, Mou-de-le-tou...." and on and on and on.  It would take on different variations, forms and nicknames but I rarely remember him just calling me Brooke.  Papaw would do this for my brother, my cousins, our parents, our pets, neighborhood dogs and cats, ducks on the lakes, squirrels in the tree.  You get the point.  My mother also inherited this habit, hence my names growing up varied from Brookie, Boogie, Booger, Boogie Bear, Lucy, Lucy Goosey, Girly, etc.

I don't know if Jared picked it up from me or if he came that way too but we know one of us has really done something wrong when "Brooke" or "Jared" is used when talking to each other.  Otherwise, we usually call each other some variation of Lover, Lover Face, T, T-Knucks, Knuckle Beater or Squash.  When we're out in public or with a group, we tend to get weird looks, followed by a "What did you just call him?" and then "What does that mean?"  To be honest, I probably couldn't tell you where the names came from in the eight years we've been together but they make sense to us.

All of this being said, at nine months our daughter is currently learning that her name is one of the following:
Harper-do-shus, Dough-sh, Dough-shul-troshush, Squa-doosh, Squirrel, Squirrely-girl, Whirly-whirl, Doo-doo, Doo-doo Head, Poopsinpants, Pumpkin-Head, Pumpkin-Face, Pumpkin-Pants, Lover-girl, The Girl, Harps and Harp-a-lar-pa-ding-dong

So I'm officially working on calling her Harper but I can't make any promises that she won't show up to pre-school introducing herself as Doo-doo Head Elizabeth Meabon.  Something tells me that might not go over too well.