Infant Nicknames

I have three sisters, all whom have young children branded with infantile petnames – ‘The Boobus’, ‘Birdy’, ‘Dudes’, etc. As I'm notorious for giving nicknames to almost everyone I know, my family was assured that our firstborn son, Nicholas, would get the budweiser of all nicknames.

Admittedly, I have to credit Nick for creating his own moniker. Upon his first breath of sterile hospital air, he didn’t really wail like the babies I had seen on TV or in movies. He popped out, his mouth opened wide, his face got red, and then this pitiful little cry spewed forth that sounded something like ‘unGUYYYYYYYY, unGUYYYYYYYY’. We were later relieved to learn that he really didn’t cry much at all. And on those rare occasions when his fussiness would begin to escalate, that cry soon became our own personal noun, as in, ‘Uh, oh, I think I hear an unGuy coming’ or ‘Did you get any unGuys today?’ which rapidly morphed into ‘I think unGuy had a blowout' or ‘How long’s unGuy been asleep?’ We grasped in vain at any sense of a nickname that would keep his masculinity intact. We threw ‘Dude’, ‘Big Guy’, ‘Bud’ at him. Nothing stuck. Sorry, unGuy.