Are you calling “Boobear” or “John Hinge”?
Whether it be an endearing — and possibly embarrassing — nickname or their full legal name, your partner’s contact name in your phone gives insight into your relationship.
According to relationship experts, here’s what the moniker could mean.
“Since the name on our phone is a visual symbol of our partner, and a reminder of our relationship with them, using personal jokes or nicknames can reflect a deeper or more intimate connection,” Eloise Skinner, a psychotherapist, told The Independent.
“If our partner uses our full name just like they would for any other contact, we might feel they don’t attribute additional value to our communication,” Skinner said.
However, she warns that “this may not be true” for all couples.
Some practical people save all their contacts by their legal name — and it can be a huge help in emergencies.
Laura learned that lesson the hard way.
The communications manager was riding her bike one day when she fell and broke her arm.
A group of strangers who witnessed the incident rushed to her aid and quickly grabbed her phone to call her emergency contact.
The issue was that she had borrowed her husband’s phone to use his Apple Music account and didn’t know what name her spouse had used for her on his phone.
“I wasn’t listed under my name, so I proceeded to list all the names I could be saved under, all while I was in agony on the floor,” she recounted to The Independent.
She rattled off everything she could think of, including “Snugglef–k.”
That was when she “heard the chuckles.”
In the end, she learned that she was simply saved as “My Girl” — a sweet fact she only learned after breaking a bone and being publicly embarrassed.
While it might not always be so dramatic, your partner’s contact name could be less secretive than you think.
“Most of the time, these details are fairly private to us,” registered therapist Georgina Sturmer explained to The Independent.
“This offers us license to use whichever type of terminology we want – funny, flirty, professional, cold.” However, she admitted that “increasingly, the names for our contacts are entering the public domain.”
If you have your iMessage linked to your work laptop, a text from “Sugar Lips” could pop up while you’re sharing your screen with your co-workers. If you’re driving and have synced your phone to your GPS, a message from, say, the “Mayor of Pound Town” could be announced for all passengers to hear.
Oops.
However, some people may stick to saving a person’s real name — or not save a number at all, for more pessimistic reasons.
“When we take a measure like this, we are incorporating an element of protection,” Sturmer noted. “After all, if we have saved someone’s name, then there’s a risk we might need to change or delete it if the relationship doesn’t work out.”
This leads to the idea that people’s contact names could have less to do with their creative style and more to do with their attachment style.
People who are “insecure-anxious” are often “preoccupied with seeking reassurance and affection,” so using a “cute nickname or an in-joke” could be a way to connect themselves to that person, Sturmer explained.
Those who are “insecure-avoidant” might “keep the names simple, brief and professional” to be more “dismissive, maintaining distance from those around them,” she noted to the publication.
“The distance helps protect them from the rejection that they fear might come if they show that they care about someone else.”
Beyond what name or nickname pops up on your phone, another factor that could give you a read on your relationship is how often it appears on your screen.
