Danny is smart enough to learn my name from observation and know to label me with it. My name is way too hard for him to pronounce, so he calls me 'Erranie'. What I think is fascinating is he's also smart enough to cut it shorter to 'Erie'. It's strange to see how he can cut my name to know the concept of giving me a nickname. Normally if he uses his words and asks for attention, it's just "Erie! Erie! Erranie!" He uses the nickname first, and if I don't respond promptly he shifts to my full name. Are there other birds who do something similar with learning names? I'm very curious.

None of my birds talk at all! However they have learned to tell the difference between the sound of my car and the other car in the family. They'll shriek when they hear my car arriving, but not when the other car arrives. I think that's kinda-sorta like calling my name.

Have you heard any other stories like this? I assume you're still probably more invested in birds online than I am. After TC, I vanished off the face of the earth.

Just remembered, I have a snip of him addressing me.

His voice is so cute!!!

I don't specifically remember stories of birds giving someone a nickname, but there are lots of stories about birds being able to use words correctly. And birds are definitely smart enough to go with what works. If he mispronounced your name once in a way that was easier to say (possibly by accident) and you responded to it, then he just discovered an easier way to get your attention.

There's a great story about Alex the famous grey parrot who was the subject of the behavioral studies that helped Irene Pepperburg discover how intelligent parrots are. He was able to use human language correctly to identify objects by shape, color, number, etc. But sometimes he would intentionally identify things wrong just because he felt like being a brat. He consistently refused to call an apple by the right name (it was a treat not a test object), and invented his own word for it instead. He called it "banerry" which was a combination of banana and cherry. Which made perfect sense - it was yellow on the inside like a banana and red on the outside like a cherry, and who knows what the taste and texture might have seemed like to him.

Maybe your name really is Earnie and you have been pronouncing it wrong this entire time. Anyway, at least it’s not some dumb name like Taffy. Or worse, Teffy.

Or Sneffanie.

I know all about Alex. I even have a book on him. I guess I was just wondering if other bird owners have reported cases of nicknames.

The soft S in the beginning is way too hard for him. I'm surprised he skipped over the hard T, but he jumped straight for the E instead. He also appeared to replace the 'ph' with R. He got the last part right at least. Odd because as he's gotten older, he can pronounce S sounds. He can say "kiss" and "juice" (or 'oose' as he calls it).

The big mystery to me is how parrots can make the "P" sound when they don't have lips.