Nicknames

Nicknames are funny things. They replace our given names, which never really said anything descriptive about us as people to begin with, and tell the world what we are like, or at least what the people around us think we are like. Some people’s nicknames are very private, known only to themselves and whoever bestowed the nickname on them. Other people’s nicknames stick to them like super glue and become such a part of them that no one ever knew them to go by any other name.
Sports used to be the place you could go to find a rich gold mine full of colorful nicknames. In baseball, Babe Ruth, besides his nickname of a first name, was known as “The Sultan of Swat” because of the way he could swing a bat, and Ted Williams was called “The Splendid Splinter” for his skinny physique. In football, they played off O. J. Simpson’s initials and called him “The Juice”, while in the case of defensive lineman William Perry, the nickname “The Refrigerator” told fans all they needed to know about his imposing size. In basketball, Hakeem Olajuwon was “The Dream” and Clyde Drexler was “The Glide”.
Now, sports is no longer a nickname haven – not because they don’t still hand out nicknames to the players, but because the nicknames are no longer very creative. Almost every player these days gets a stock nickname made up of the first letter of his first name and the first part of his last name. Alex Rodriguez is one of baseball’s best hitters, yet all they can come up with for a nickname is “A-Rod”. When Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio led the Houston Astros, they were given the highly descriptive nicknames “Bags” and “Bidge”, respectively. In fact, the sports nickname business has hit such a dry spot that its most creative practitioner is a player himself (basketball’s Shaquille O’Neal) who gives himself his own nicknames. He has called himself “The Big Aristotle”, “Shaqtus” (when he was traded to the desert of Phoenix), “The Big Diesel”, and “Shaqovic” (playing off the fact that some of the NBA’s best shooters are Eastern Europeans with the suffix “-ovic” in their surnames), among other nicknames.
I myself have never been a nickname magnet, and I am not very talented at thinking of good ones for other people. From an early age my family called me “Bubba”, sometimes shortened to “Bub”, which still hangs on to a lessening degree today. My sister, when she was very small, called me “Bubby” because she could not say “brother”, and to this day she rarely calls me anything else. Of late I have gotten a couple new nicknames – “The Big Brick” (not because of my poor basketball-shooting skills, but because my first name, Clayton, may be divided into the phrase “clay ton”), and “The Hammer” (because I once said I was “hammering out” a new article). At least those are better than “C-Wilk” or “Wilks”. I also have a somewhat private nickname; actually, it is not as private as it is publicly unused. It is “Clay-Clay-Poo” and comes from my sister, who came up with it because she knew it sounded ridiculous. She delighted in it so much that she once entered it as my official name on the scoring computer at the bowling alley. Any use of that name in public will do nothing except cause me to ignore the user.
In our family, the best nicknames are given to our pets. When I was very little we had a dog named Satch, who was given several nicknames – “Satchmo”, “Satchel Paige”, and “Mayor McConn” (or just “The Mayor”), among others. Our German Shepherd Willie, who died in 1999, was so big that he went by “The Big Guy”, “The Great Big Guy”, or simply “Great Big”. Our current Basset Hound Droopy has many nicknames, including “Droonberg”, “Droobert”, “Droondibar”, and a very recent one, “The Sheriff”, because he thinks it is his duty to patrol the yard and bark at the top of his lungs at everything he sees. Other pets’ nicknames are not so affectionate. My parents call the little bird Julius (who is very much loved and appreciated by my sister and me) “Dumbirdo” simply because they think he is annoying.
Although the nicknames used among family and friends and pets are usually good-natured and frequently affectionate, there are realms in which they are not used in a friendly way. I can think of no better example than politics. For a president, the most desirable nicknames are the dull ones. After all, there is no greater honor for a president than to go by his initials – TR, FDR, JFK, and LBJ come quickly to mind. Some have gone by only slightly better nicknames like “Honest Abe”, “Ike”, “The Great Communicator”, and “Dubya”. But the minute a president starts going by ever-more-descriptive nicknames, he knows his popularity is sinking, at least in some quarters. Richard Nixon (“Tricky Dick”) and Bill Clinton (“Slick Willie”) got nicknames that implied they had an impaired sense of honesty. And when they start calling you “Liar-in-Chief”, or yelling “Jail to the Thief”, it’s a sure sign you need to meet with your PR department.
So ends for now this brief look into the wide world of nicknames. As for me, it doesn’t really matter what you call me, as long as it isn’t “late for dinner” or “Clay-Clay-Poo”.