Most nicknames are unintentional, unflattering and/or bestowed upon you by others.
Did you have a flattering one? Or one that you hate? Or one that makes you proud? Or did you give someone one that stuck?
One that fit and stuck with me as a kid was my dad calling me Donkey. My dad gave me the nickname because he thought I could be an incredibly stubborn ass (he wasn’t wrong.) This was his version of Red Foreman’s Dumbass. Mom didn’t like it one bit, but that never stopped dad calling me that during my teens. When I became an adult that disappeared. Don’t know why… it certainly wasn’t because he liked me or respected me as our relationship was rocky till my 30s.
I had someone in high school give me a whole pile of unflattering ones, but none that stuck to me socially as it turned out the person was more annoying and not as clever or funny as he thought.
At one workplace I was known as Vomit for getting drunk and puking in my supervisor’s car early in my work life. It only lasted a couple of months mostly because I never reacted to it.
I rarely call folks by nickname unless they insist.
flattering ….no
me mates knew me as dutchy…or dutch kris
co workers went with princess or lurch
you know…. coz im a fucking dainty little tall ass flower that says you rang if you call him lurch 🙂
^.^
fwiw mr manchu….. call me brodie…if farscy doesnt suit you
too many fucking chrisses on this planet
k, Brodie.
lol… k.brodie…yup..that me
i am a kristiaan tho….not yer average chris
fwiw… my brother is also a k brodie
hes a kai tho….and he has a middle name coz my parents got a taste for naming things after they had me
Most of mine are plays on my name or references to my small stature. My best friend from the time I was around 14 until my late 20s was a sociopath that gave me a number of mean nicknames that he used when he wanted to punish me. I cut him out of my life in my 30s and haven’t spoken to him since. No regrets.
In elementary school I was called Rudolph the red nosed hauli because I always had a sun burned nose. In high school a few friends called me the General because I took them surfing on a military base & the MPs had to salute my dad’s officer sticker. Another guy called me Bob because he didn’t like my real name & said I looked like a Bob. He got all his friends doing it & even introduced me as Bob. I hated it. Now my beer club calls me Top Hop because I started the club & was the beer expert before we added a few industry guys.
I like Top Hop! That’s a cool nickname.
My sister nicknamed me after an unflattering Pokémon when we were kids. It stuck because I refused to let her see that it bothered me. Eventually I grew to like it and my gaming ID is always a spin on the nickname. When I was addicted to Summoners War, I was the leader of a guild which included some of my neighbors and a bunch of people from around the world. We were hardcore into it and had an out of game chat set up for it. It felt funny to hear my neighbors call me by the nickname that only my sister uses.
Re: Donkey. I feel for you Manchu. My mom has a sweet nickname “Munch/Munchkin” for me and a terrible one “Elephant Woman” which she stopped using once I grew up and set boundaries. I never knew if she meant it as a reference to the elephant man or because I was bigger than the average Asian girl (being half German will do that to you). Either way it crippled my self worth as a kid/teen. Only when I became and adult and took some psych classes did I realize she is a bipolar narcissist. Then she started to have less power over me and my self worth. To this day, she denies ever calling me that. Gaslighting is also part of her parenting toolbox.
Oof, that’s on a level with Joan Crawford and Bing Crosby stuff.
I didn’t know until a decade ago that my dad could be extremely cruel with nicknames especially to his bosses (and the donkey apple does not fall far from the tree) who pissed him off.
I actually got off lucky as he could have called me a lot worse.
The nickname never really bothered me or damaged my self worth but my self worth was damaged for a long time because Korean/Asian parents sometimes border on cruel when it comes to showing little or no confidence in my abilities. That’s what got me.
I had an aunt who called me skidmark for years because when I was about 5 or 6 and spent the night at my grandparents house, turns out I left a little smear in my underwear and she decided I shouldn’t be allowed to forget that.
What an asshole. Sorry about your cruel aunt.
My grandfather was great with nicknames. He would always make the nickname part of your real name. Example: my cousin Eric, when he was a baby, used to scream like a banshee. So, Grandpa called him Earache.
Grandpa was also the recipient of a nickname when he was younger. His real name was Frank, but when he was dating my grandmother, she already had a couple of Frank’s in the family (one by blood and one by marriage), so one of her brothers said, “forget that, your name is Mike.” From then on, he was called Mike by everyone in Grandma’s family. Even her nieces and nephews called him Uncle Mike until the day he died.
In my family, nicknames were given out of love, not cruelty, so ALL of us had our Nickname, which the whole family used, then our Legal Name, which only got used if you were in trouble.
The tradition goes back a few generations now, honestly, my great-grandma was an Ellen Elizabeth who was called “Bessie” or “Bess” great aunts & uncles were Al (Albert), Joe (Joseph), Hank (Henry), Jo (Josephine), Frannie (Frances), etc.
And ALL the kids (and even Spouses who married IN to the family!) had their Nickname/common name, then their Legal/formsl name.
Honestly? I LOVE it! Because you instantly know if someone’s trying to claim they “know” you, and it’s great for weeding out telemarketers & stammer too–because if someone tries referring to you by your “formal name,” and insists that they know you? You know it’s a BS call!😉😈
And I love that I have “three rings of security” around that, too😁
Because there’s me as “Full Legal Name” meaning someone outside Law Enforcement, the Federal Government, or the Medical field is a total scammer, the “outer ring” nickname, and “inner-ring”/family/GOOD friends nickname… think “Jennifer/Jenny/Jen or J” and that’s basically the sequence with my legal&nicknames sequence😁
And at work, my last nickname was “Sheriff,” because I made sure things atthe old grocery store were kept in line, dates were checked, and kept items “on the straight & narrow” (aka, in their slot on the shelving SKU system😉)