Coffemate, Ice and Party

I kid you not, these are names of kids in my class.
Thais have extremely long names so many people have nicknames they go by. Apparently nicknames are also used to trick evil spirits. In the Buddhism religion, it is believed that if you go by your given name, evil spirits will find you and take you away...so giving your child (or yourself) a nickname confuses such evil spirits.
Some nicknames have similarities to given names, others make no sense at all!
Here are a few that just about killed me when reading them:
Coffeemate
Ice
Party
Pooh (yes like Winnie the Pooh)
Pan Pan
Noodle
Gigi
AI (pronounced "I")
The best part of all is people change their nickname whenever they want. One week they might be called "Minna, the next Tata".
It's all very confusing and hard to stay on top of your student's name!