Recently at mahjong, one of the ladies mentioned that her husband’s name is Chase and their son’s name is Jase.
I looked at her and said, “You did that on purpose?”
She laughed. “Well, yeah, I guess. We named him.”
Fair point.
But it got me thinking about names. More specifically, nicknames.
I have always had opinions about nicknames, probably because I grew up watching what happened to people’s names whether they liked it or not.
My dad’s name is Ronald. As a child, of course, he became Ronny. Eventually he outgrew Ronny and became Ron, which apparently made enough of an impression on me that when it came time to name my own children, I had a plan: choose names that do not have obvious nicknames.
Simple.
Nickname-Proof
My daughter became Kayla. My son became Marcus.
Not Mark. Marcus.
For a while, I even considered spelling it Markus with a K. Kayla already had a K, and I thought Markus looked kind of cool. But I did not want him to become Mark, so I stayed with the traditional spelling.
M-A-R-C-U-S.
There. Nickname-proof.
Nothing obvious to shorten. Nothing embarrassing hiding inside it. Nothing anyone could possibly do with this perfectly respectable name.
Then I brought him home from the hospital.
At some point, my brand-new baby spit up on me, and I looked down at him and said, “Oh, mucus.”
I froze.
Mucus.
Marcus.
Oh, man.
I did that.
Apparently, there is no such thing as a nickname-proof name.
The Ones We Don’t Choose
I should have known. My own name is Renee, which seems pretty safe. Not really.
When my brother was little and couldn’t say Renee, he called me Nay. That one hung around enough that a few friends called me Nay too. My husband sometimes calls me Ren. My mother does too. At one point, some friends called me Reenie.
Those were fine.
And then there was Bow Wow.
My maiden name was Bowen—B-O-W-E-N—but my family pronounced it with a short o. Bow-en. Like the beginning of “Bow Wow.”
Every year, teachers would read the roster and pronounce it wrong, and every year I would correct them. Apparently some of my classmates found this endlessly entertaining, so I became Renee Bow-Wow-en.
Bow Wow.
Exactly what every elementary- and middle-school girl hopes people will call her.
I hated it, but there was one advantage.
They pronounced my last name correctly.
Sometimes nicknames are affectionate. Sometimes they are ridiculous. Sometimes they are inflicted upon us by people who think they are much funnier than they actually are. And sometimes they take on a life of their own.
And Then They Stick
My husband, Tom, coached soccer for a while, and he was a great believer in nicknames. He gave almost every player one. Sometimes the nickname came from something the player did especially well, and sometimes it came from something he needed to work on.
One of the boys on his team was named Justin. Justin was very tall with long legs, but instead of sprinting everywhere, he tended to lope along.
At the time, we had two horses. Duke was the older one. Shorty was the younger one, and Shorty had been a barrel-racing horse. If you were riding Shorty and accidentally gave him the wrong signal, you knew it immediately. He could go from a walk to a gallop in what felt like a single shift.
So Tom started yelling to Justin during practice, “Find a new gear, Shorty!”
Shorty.
The very tall kid.
Named after our horse.
And it stuck.
Years later, Justin ended up in my class in high school, except by then hardly anyone called him Justin. He was Shorty in class, Shorty with his friends, Shorty in yearbook pictures, Shorty everywhere. I would not be surprised if he is still Shorty on Facebook.
At some point, I told him I knew exactly where that nickname had come from.
He had no idea.
He had spent years being called Shorty and never knew he was named after a barrel-racing horse.
But not every nickname comes from a coach yelling across a soccer field.
One of my favorite nickname stories belongs to a former student named Susanna. I taught her from seventh grade all the way through graduation. She was pretty, kind, athletic, and fun—one of those girls everybody loved. She was also the youngest of six children, with three older brothers and two older sisters, so apparently by the time her family got around to naming her, her given name was almost beside the point.
If I remember the story correctly, she became Cutie, then Cutie-Patootie, then Tootie, and finally just Toot.
By the time she was in high school, everyone who knew her well called her Toot. Since it ended up on her volleyball jersey, I’m assuming she didn’t mind.
Maybe that is one of the best things about nicknames: they collect stories. Some begin as jokes. Some begin with affection. Some are given to us, some we choose, and some evolve so gradually that no one quite remembers where they started.
And sometimes they stick so completely that the nickname becomes more familiar than the name you started with.
Some Names Stay Retired
My dad is eighty-one now, and he still plays more sports than most people half his age. He plays horseshoes, golf, bowling, and softball.
Recently, at horseshoes, he ended up playing with a group that already had several men named Ron. One of the guys finally said, “I can’t have another Ron. Do you go by a nickname?”
My dad had options.
Over the years, people have called him Ace because he has always been irritatingly good at just about everything. He has also been called Rabbit. His initials are R.A.B., and he used to sign things simply “Rab.” Somewhere along the way, Rab became Rabbit.
So when he was asked if he had a nickname, he gave them those two choices: Ace or Rabbit.
For some reason, he did not mention Ronny.
Interesting.
Apparently, at eighty-one, there are still some names you are perfectly happy to leave in childhood.
And maybe that is the funny thing about nicknames. We put enormous thought into naming people, and then everyone around them immediately starts making adjustments. We shorten names. Stretch them. Mispronounce them. Turn initials into animals. Name children after horses without telling them. Accidentally discover that our carefully chosen baby name sounds like a bodily substance.
And somehow, those names become part of the stories we tell about each other.
Some disappear. Some survive for decades. Some make us cringe. Some still make us smile.
And some leave us wondering why we ever thought we had control over any of this in the first place.
