I don’t know why, but I enjoy giving my mom a hard time with off-the-wall names. It started when we were thinking of naming our daughter [name]Rylee[/name], since then we decided not to go with it. But my mom is STILL stuck on it, and has an opinion against every other name we throw out there. So lately I’ve been telling her off-the-wall names just to get a little rise out of her. My husband and I get a little chuckle out of it.
Does anyone else do this to a family member or friend???
I can’t say I’ve done this, but it sure sounds like fun! And serves your mom right, if you ask me!
I knew an elderly couple who had a much younger married relative who was expecting a baby. The relative and her husband would tell their families that the baby’s name was going to be [name]Hortense[/name]. No matter how many times the families asked them, that’s what they replied. Then when the baby was born, they told their families the baby’s real name. My elderly friends thought that this [name]Hortense[/name] business was a great idea. Actually it’s a business tactic called “Shock and Recovery”.
Sure! We do it all the time in my family. I’m always teasing my mum that I’m going to name my kids something really bizarre. In fact, since I was little my dad keeps trying to convince us that he wanted to call me and my sister [name]Griselda[/name] and Ermentrude 
I think it’s actually a good think to choose a ‘fake’ comical name, as [name]Susan[/name] mentioned. It can be a dangerous thing to tell family your choices before a baby is born (unless they are name enthusiasts wink wink) as they will invariably make you doubt yourself. Having a fake name will prevent that in an amusing way I think.
That reminds me… when my mom was pregnant with my brother, my dad kept telling her he wanted to name him [name]Wolfgang[/name] and change our last name to VonKarz (Karz is the short version of my maiden Polish name we would use when ordering food). I think it was to get a rise out of her, too. lol
Knowing how both sides of the family would ultimately grill us on name choices and give unsolicited naming advice, we decided to tell everyone that we were going to name our baby [name]Zebulon[/name]. We even joked that that it would be funny to tell people we picked it because it could work well for a boy or girl. The nickname would be Zebbie either way. We were right, of course. My inlaws wanted to know right away what names we were thinking of and made it clear that they didn’t want any weird, modern/yuppy names for their grands. After we dropped “the bomb”, so to speak, everyone stopped bothering us about names.
I don’t personally have any that I use, but my uncle gives us (his nieces and nephews) weird nn’s.
Here’s a sampling of nn’s in my family:
[name]Crash[/name]
Spike
Smokey
Sprinkles
Porkchop
Tootie
Gilligan