Nicknaming the nicknameless

Jen's French family has a long history of using pet names in the place of more formal titles, like grandmother and aunt. This practice is charming but sometimes confusing to the non-french speaking American daughter-in-law (me), who struggles to follow the simplest communications, let alone unerstanding when it's ok to call an 80 year old great-aunt Do-Do. Anyway, Jen's mom is Kiki to her grandkids (also her pet name as a child) and Jen is MiMi (mee-mee) to Graham (athough her pet name is Ninette, pronounced Nee-nette). All of this works really well and helped us get around the two moms thing. I guess now is the time to create one of these names for Graham, whose name does not lend itself being shortened. Whitney can sometimes be Whit (though less now as I get older) and Jennifer is almost always Jen, but Graham, no matter how you pronouce it, is Graham. So, we're experimenting with names: from the utterly silly (Grambone) to the obvious (G), to the very nice (Gray, the current front-runner). Such pet names are rarely used outside of the immediate family in France, but I think in the States you have to be prepared for kids to use their short names in class, cutting GoGo out of the running.