What is your preferred way of referring to your characters?

I ask because I simply hate the epithet, "toons." Is it just me? I think this may stem from my role-playing background. I don't roleplay on DDO (I prefer to think that my characters have a background in there somewhere, though I can't currently be bothered to worry about it), but maybe I have a more personalized sense of my characters than those who dismiss them as "toons."

Is "toons" a dismissive term? To me, it says, "I don't really care about any of these avatars, and I can change into and out of them as easily as I'd slip on a new hat." (I am, of course, ignoring that this is true in DDO.) It makes me think of a simplistic cartoon sketch of a character, rather than a deeper or personal one - EVEN THOUGH my DDO characters are not very deep or personalized. They still represent me, as a player, and they are an extension of myself into a world; not simply a background, throwaway stand-in running around Toon Town in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

Don't get me wrong, I hold no grievance against anyone who likes the term; this post is not meant to provoke a flamewar. I just wondered if it irks others as well, and whether it's related to playing D&D in real life, or what. If you are a person who uses the term "toons" to talk about your characters, do you feel you are trivializing them? Have I overthought this?

So, how do YOU refer to your set of characters, and - if you have a reason - why? If there are other terms that you find annoying, what are they? As you may have already ascertained, I simply call mine, my "characters." As in, I have a level 6 barbarian character on Ghallanda.

Please share your thoughts.