When you gaze into a baby's eyes, it's really hard not to want to blurt out cute names, even when the infant has no clue what you're saying.
Most people refer to their children with so-called normal nicknames like "cutie pie" or "chubby cheeks." Or, for someone with limited creativity, the go-to is "baby."
Parents or siblings often come up with baby pen names with hopes that one will catch on, and then everyone can refer to the wittle bundle of joy with that name for the rest of his or her life.
It's not cool for the college frat boy, though, whose mother comes to visit and calls him "potato head" in front of his new love interest.
For some unexplainable reason, we often tend to compare babies to foods, and sweet ones, at that - cupcake, honey bunch, cookie, pudding and marshmallow. Ever hear that expression, "You're so cute, I just want to eat you up?" Just . . . why?
As the baby looks up at you and smiles with big gobs of drool dripping out of his mouth, he doesn't know that you've just referred to him as your "Sunday ham."
The top three most-used nicknames are "Peanut," "Bean" and "Baby."
Ovia, a pregnancy app developed by Harvard Scientists, gathered data on more than 2 million users to find the strangest baby nicknames from all 50 states, and the results are very interesting, according to People.
"Baby nicknames are so special because they're one of the first emotional connections a mother has with her unborn baby," says Ingrid Pierre, Ovia's director of design. "Creating pet names is a very human thing to do. It introduces intimacy into your language with your new child."
This is also a common phenomenon that occurs with partners as a way to distinguish their bond and ensure that the relationship is original and unique.
Ovia's study revealed that nicknames are often associated with location, lifestyle and language spoken in the area. There were variations from state-to-state as regional differences arose in the findings.
For example, nicknames in the South included the word "sugar," while "bean" reigns in the Northeast and "bug" in the Northwest, People reported.
"While these children will all likely get more official names once they're born, their mothers will probably always call them by this very first one," Pierre said.
Among some of the weirdest names across the U.S. are: "Happy Meal," "Lil Bum," "Pizza Bagel," "Monster Munchkin" and "Bean Kid."
Check out Ovia's chart to see more weird baby nicknames:
