Is it inappropriate to (affectionately) refer to your child as a "nerd"?

I have three kids. My older son and my daughter are both athletes. My middle is a self described nerd. He'll refer to himself as one often.Anyway, we went to a friends BBQ earlier today for a little bit. I was sitting at our table with my kids and a couple of friends. We were making some small talk and they asked my older son if he was ready for baseball season. They then asked my other kids if they did sports and my daughter told them that she was doing lacrosse this spring. My other son told them that he doesn't play sports and my husband put an arm around our son and said something along the lines of, "No sports for (son's name). He's our resident nerd." My son laughed and affirmed that was the case.One of my friends seemed to get a little offended. She kind of scolded my husband a little bit and told him he shouldn't say something like that in front of our kid. My son told her it was fine, but she still didn't seem to get it.This isn't odd, right? If my son calls himself a nerd, is it still not okay for us to do so? We like to joke a lot as a family. We didn't mean anything by it and my son knows that. Should we still be cautious about ruining our son's self esteem by joking around in this manner? via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2moeIDX