uuuglychildren

Growing up, my parents always had silly nicknames for me. My mom really had only one, and it's a secret. My dad mostly called me Magoo (or is that spelled Muggoo?), but he made up new ones all the time. Most are lost, but I remember loving them. I was born in 1970. Star Wars was very important to me. Not only did I love it, I also learned to read from the trading cards. And those cards featured a lot of far out names: names of planets; names of starships; names of characters; names that weren't even in the movie! (IG88 anyone?) All set me to imagining: What kind of language birthed the name “Beru?” Was Moff (as in “Grand Moff Tarkin”) a name or a title? Were the Sand People called Tusken Raiders because they had tusks or was “tusken” a non-English word? Was the “TIE” in “TIE/Fighter” an abbreviation? If so, for what? It doesn't matter that a lot of these questions were ”answered“ by the subsequent comic books, TV shows, video games, novels, prequels, etc., etc., because I was never interested in the Star Wars Expanded Universe and any “authoritative” explanations could never live up to the mystery with which I had imbued these wonderful names. (You can criticise George Lucas for a lot of things, but he was good with names.) All the foregoing being prologue to my love of making up the silly names you will find here. Some are true nicknames. Others little works of speculative fiction or comedy. As I have explained, I have always loved made up names, but since having kids, they have really taken up residence in my imagination. The nicknames come to me when I talk to my children, of course. The others I usually find a waiting on the tip of my tongue when I awake. The title of the blog comes from a silly song I sing to my kids. The words are: Ugly children, They live in your house and they eat your food. They are so rude. Why don't they all get jobs. The melody cannot be sung by your vocal chords.