I think there's a difference between pet names and terms of endearment. I consider the generics, "honey," "sweets," "babe," "doll," etc. to be terms of endearment, and in general, no one I'm not intimately involved with should try to use them on me (where the intimacy can be of a friendly or romantic nature). I tend to rankle at the over-familiarity of them, otherwise.
Pet names tend to be person-specific. Terms of endearment can turn into pet names if they take on exclusive use - like, I used to call an ex of mine "snuggle bunny." I'd never used it on anyone else, nor will I use it again. It just fit him somehow. I also often think of pet names as private names. For example, my father is the only person in the world call my mother by her middle name, often even using the diminutive of it. That's his pet name for her. Beah is my pet name far more than it is my nickname, which explains 1) why I find it so warm and cute when mrf_arch calls me by it, and 2) why I *hate* it when people I'm not intimately close to assume it's okay to call me by it.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2005-05-07 04:48 pm (UTC)Pet names tend to be person-specific. Terms of endearment can turn into pet names if they take on exclusive use - like, I used to call an ex of mine "snuggle bunny." I'd never used it on anyone else, nor will I use it again. It just fit him somehow. I also often think of pet names as private names. For example, my father is the only person in the world call my mother by her middle name, often even using the diminutive of it. That's his pet name for her. Beah is my pet name far more than it is my nickname, which explains 1) why I find it so warm and cute when