Hen is definitely a term of endearment, obviously for a female. I always think of it as a particularly west of Scotland word although it is sometimes used in the east.
An English woman of my acquaintance once told me that she would never get used to being called ‘hen’, I don’t know why she found it so strange because it isn’t really any different from being called ‘duck’ which is very common in England.
Of course in France it’s common to call someone ‘my little cabbage’, which somehow just doesn’t do it for me.
In Germany it’s ‘Sneckerlie’, which means little snail, or is that only for babies?
I think hen is beginning to die out now and people seem to use words like ‘dear’ or ‘honey’. There should be a campaign to save the Scottish hen of endearment!
My dad often called me hen. Well it saved him from getting our names mixed up, I was the third daughter after all and the fifth child. Otherwise he would go through the whole family before getting to my name, which didn’t really bother me but I did object to being called Candy, which sometimes did happen.
Well, Candy was the family dog – a totally mad border collie.