I simply will not be one of those families whose children use their parents’ Christian names. We are not in some sort of perverted cult

A Rubicon has been crossed. There we were, an adult couple on a night out, with no child in sight, and, with me confirming across a bar whether it was a merlot or a cabsav, I very nearly called my wife Mammy. Luckily her name begins with Ma so I was able to divert at the last minute. Mammm… arie. It wasn’t graceful. Figuratively speaking, I avoided the goalpost and ended up tangled in the back of the net but still, with no broken kneecap.

We are Mammy and Daddy now so much of the time, so it requires an actual mental shift to use our own names. I suppose it’s part of the necessary sublimation of the self that comes with parenting. I simply will not be one of those families whose children use their parents’ Christian names. We are not in some sort of perverted cult. When, on the odd occasion, I heard my parents call each other by their first name, I thought they were getting a divorce. Every so often my eldest will call me Colm and I will shut that nonsense down straight away. When she says my name, it feels like she has gained a power over me. Like when call centre employees overuse my name. “Now Colm, if you could just quote your customer number Colm … let me just look you up on the system … that’s great Colm now it says here that you are not entitled to get annoyed about the thing you rang up to be annoyed about because you haven’t looked at a single term and condition since you first signed up for this service have you?”