Camp Names

[Skater Bubbles]

What's your camp name and how are names choosen at your camp?

My camp name is Bubbles and at our camp your name is choosen for you by another staff member, normally a returning staff. You can't change it, so if they decide to call you "Stinky" your stuck with it. I am called Bubbles because during staff training we had a four day overnight and I never put on sunscreen the whole time and I wore a backwards baseball hat all week so, my ears got extremly sunburnt, so burnt that they blistered. So I ended up getting giant bubbles on top of both of my ears!! It was horrible, so ya that's how I got the name Bubbles.

[camper]

we don't have camp names, i think that's mainly a gs/ymca thing. mostly everyone at my camp is called by some sort of nickname though, having to do w/their real name or just their last name.

[CAMPFRIEND]

I work for the YMCA and we don't have camp names!!

[Indigo]

We have camp names! And we pick our own. Some of the younger campers change their names every year, but once you're a WIT or a CIT, or staff, then you're no longer allowed to (though exceptions have been made in the past). I was Gerbil, Dolphin, Salamander, and Kiwi before I was Indigo, and Indigo is definitely the best for me!

[rockinsmiles]

we dont have staff names but nicknames are totally there!

[ocean]

My camp name is Ocean and we choose our own camp names

[CAMPFRIEND]

If you have a camp name what is the reason for them? I don't think that it's a bad thing but I am just wondering.

[Dave]

We don't have camp names at our camp. Sometimes the kids will make up nicknames for you though.

[camplover86]

My camp name is Gumbo. An international gave it to me on the first day of staff training when we were thinking of what our names would be.

[Skater Bubbles]

Oh wow, I didn't know that most people didn't have camp names!! I love having camp names, it's fun and I am glad that the kids don't call me by my first name.

[Indigo]

The reason behind our camp names (aside from them being lots of fun) is for the staff's safety. That way parents can't harass a counselor about a problem or something, they have to go through the Girl Scout Council, and in the process they would have to talk out the problem and such...

[CAMPFRIEND]

Ok. Thank you Indigo!

[Flukie]

Also, the tradition for GS began when girls first started going to camp. It was way too informal for them to call adults by their first names, but way too formal to call them Mrs. So camp names were introduced.

My camp name is Fluke - this will be my ninth summer using it. I answer to Flukie, Flukina or "Flukus" as my next batch of CITs started to call me... (It rhymes with mucus and they found it funny - I will never understand 15 year old girls. They never use it meanly - weird weird children...)

My best friends all have camp names cause we met at camp - even when we hang out outside of camp, they go by the camp names. Yelling for Snoopy in the grocery store in the middle of winter can be very amusing... :)

[Skater Bubbles]

-Same here, my camp friends still call me by my camp name even when we are not at camp or anything. Actually I don't think they have ever called me my real name!

[S_R_Star]

I go by Star at my camp, we get a say in what we are going to be called, but sometimes previous staff will help you decide what you want to be called.
I chose Star, because i like the shape and i have star stuff all over my room and i didn't want an Australian name like Koala or Dundee or anything like that.

I usually go between real names and camp names with the people i am close with and after weekends off i find it hard to slip back into camp names, but usually when we make a trip to Walmart in a 2 we are calling each other by camp names.

Funny story, i wasn't there but my camp director told me once she had taken a group to wal-mart and when it was time to go they hadn't returned, so she had them paged by there camp names so it wouldn't be mistaken as to who was being called. SHe did it in good fun and the staff have never forgotten it and we always threaten to do it to newbies.

[Fallen]

I love having camp names at camp. It's a lot of fun.

Anyway my camp name is Fallen. When I was younger I use to have a freakish fear of falling. I would avoid anything that I could fall off of because when I did fall I would black out while falling. Never remembering the fall, but opening my eyes once I had Fallen. My friends tried telling me it would be on because I would have fallen already.

When time came for me to pick a camp name I thought of that and how different Fallen would be compared to the camp names you usually find at camp.

[Pez_2003]

My camp name is Pez, and i picked it becasue i'm a diabedic and i thought being called a pure sugar candy was kinda funny!

[KiwiCRB]

Hmm I picked Kiwi because it was my bird's name at the time. I never really meant it to stick but it did. Now i answer to it just as much as my real name and whenever i'm telling a camp story and someone doesn't understand i just say nevermind its a Kiwi thing and they know exactly what im talking about.

[crbtigger]

ok, well i have a funny story about my camp name, well the camp name i had that didn't stick.
My first year as a CIT at camp we had a Program Director named "tigger" I really really wanted that you be my camp name but they would like me be "tigger 2". Gee I wonder why? anyway, That summer i had my hair in little braids, and that was also the year "the little rascals" came out, so i just went with the name "Buckwheat" like the little kid in the movie/tv show. Don't ask my why, it was just quick thinking under pressure.
Well needless to say, we have lots of younger girls that come to our camp, 1st, 2nd 3rd graders and so on, so the younger girls really couldn't say "Buckwheat" very well, so my camp name all summer came out as "butt weed" That was very embarassing and I was very relieved when the program director didn't come back the next year and i quickly grab up the name tigger and it has stick ever since.

[muchaprin]

whats your camp name mine is c-dog

[camplover86]

Mine is Gumbo

[Melk]

we dont have camp names. Some staff get nicknames because their are more then one person with that name.

I got my nick name (which people at school call me too) because we have a message borad for our staff to keep in touch. Well there is another girl named melissa and I was getting sick of signing all my post "Melissa K" so I just shortened it to Melk and it has stuck with me for more then a year.... Some times people at camp call me by my real name but most of the time I dont respond to them because I think they are talking to the other Melissa.

[audur]

I work at a GS camp, so we all have camp names - well, the staff and CITs do, campers do not. My camp name's Dixie. We get to choose our own camp names, but a lot of the time other staff will help you out. I was "named" by a returning counselor who was determined to find me a camp name as soon as possible because noone could pronounce my real name... I like the Dixie Chicks, and while we were driving to camp a song of theirs came on the radio and I started singing along... so I became Dixie. I really like it, and I tend to use that name when I introduce myself in English...

I mostly just get called Dixie, but last summer for some reason "Dix" caught on. I also like to tell my campers that my last name is Cup, so I sometimes get called Dixie Cup...

[muchaprin]

my first summer I got really tired of being called by my camp name but now I love it we choose our own names one of our directors changes her name every year but most people try and change there name but it does not stick we had a girl name stringer that tryed to change her name to verdigo but she gave up so camp names nick name turned into stringo
I have heard we have camp names because it make it so it not so formal but not to informal we have also been told that it so the campers or there family can not find us after camp I just think its fun and when you have three andreas its nice

[Pooka]

It's mostly the CITs, Program Aids and counselors that get camp names at my camp, and most people chose them for themselves. Last summer there was a counselor who couldn't remember camper names and resorted to giving them nicknames instead. She never had a problem after that.

My camp name is Spoot. It's a really obsure reference to an old cartoon, and I think I might change it to 'Spook' so it's easier to remember and say. The campers always got me and three other counselors confused-- we all have brown hair and glasses. I'd answer to any combination of the four nicknames by the end of the summer.

[Sparkes]

I like the idea of having camp names so parents can't harass you. But, I don't think that would ever work outside GS camps though (for that reason I mean)...especially since we give out everyones name/ohon/email/mailing address at the end of summer in our directory.