Asian American Terms of Endearment
Are there such a thing? I have to admit, the first time I heard an Asian American girl about my age say “honey” when addressing a significant other, I did a double take. Even now when I encounter Asian Americans affectionately referring to people as “sweetie” and “darling”, I still feel a little strange. So I started wondering what terms of endearment first and second generation Asian Americans might encounter regularly with family members and maybe significant others. In my experience, we often address people we adore with nicknames like mei-mei, Kuu-chan, min-min or some playful name the person has somehow acquired from a personal feature (e.g. Big Eyes or Heart Warmer–kind of loses something in translation) or infamous escapade (e.g. Mudtracker). Am I just old-fashioned or showing my idiosyncratic romanticism?? What terms of endearment do you use or prefer?
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Uh, does “lao
weiye” count as a term of endearment? Maybe for us, they’re not such much endearing terms, but lovingly crafted insults?(Lao ye means old man, I’m saying, hypothetically, if one did use it as a term of endearment…)
my gf calls me honey… or bin-dan
my family, although chinese in ethnicity, have laotian names as well from spending many years there
they use those names, or the last syllable of them, as their nickname