I am living in Málaga, Andalucia. There's a guy friend always calls me "Kari" when he starts conversations with me.
He told me this use to call some kind of best friend, and it's only used in Andalucia, but Nobody ever calls me that since I've been here.
I am wondering about the real meaning of this word.
I guess it is not "Kari" but "Cari", or it has this leading K instead of C because of the typical usage of K in internet messages. Either ways, it stands for cariño.
Reading from The Free Dictionary:
4 Se emplea para dirigirse cariñosamente a una persona: ¡hola, cariño!, ¿qué tal el colegio?
So this is way to address someone you feel very much attached to. It may be a friend, but it is normally used between partners in a couple.
You can also hear it in shops, like in the market, where a [normally] older woman can say the following to the next customer in the queue:
¿Qué te pongo cariño?
That being said, it corresponds to a very specific context and I would feel a bit embarassed if some new friend would adress me like this.
As a funny extra, there is a growing feeling that such expressions are quite "ugly", so you can find posts like: Cari, churri, chata... y demás horrores stating that
Los (supuestos) nombres cariñosos son un arma de doble filo. Por un lado tienen un componente de cariño, de confianza, de intimidad, de posesión en el buen sentido de la palabra que mola mucho pero por otro lado son una manera fabulosa de conseguir que alguien te pierda el respeto para siempre jamás.
