The word snoop - Ursula Dubosarsky 2009
Nicknames
Is that a real person?
A nickname is a special name that your friends and family call you. It shows that they know you well, and usually that they like you too. When the Word Snoop was at school, her nickname was Urk. (Erk!)
The word nickname comes from the Middle English word eke, meaning “to increase,” added to the word name(so to “add to a name”). Over time, the words “an eke name” said over and over again turned into “a nickname.”
Nicknames are actually how a lot of surnames began, as a way of telling one person from another. So a redheaded person in Italy might have been nicknamed Rosso,which means “red” in Italian, and this turned into the surname “Rossi.” Or a person in England who was always tired might have been nicknamed Go to Bed, which turned into the surname Gotobed. (Come on, Mr. Gotobed, just go to bed!) Back before the Middle Ages, your own surname might have started as a nickname like this.
Nowadays nicknames are often a shortening of part of a person’s first name or surname, like Dan for Daniel, or Liz for Elizabeth, or Joe for Joseph, or Fito for Adolfito (which is already a nickname for Adolfo). Sometimes the name changes a little, like James becomes Jim, and William Bill, or Katherine Katie.
Different languages have their own ways of making nicknames—in Taiwan, for example, children’s nicknames are often made by repeating the first syllable of their name, so Bozhi turns into Bobo. In Spanish-speaking countries, often a person with green eyes will be nicknamed Gato,which means “cat.” Do you know some other ways of making up nicknames?
Nicknames can also be kinds of jokes. In English, there’s a tradition of giving someone a name that means the opposite of what they look like, so a bald man might be called Curly, or a tall person Tiny. This goes back a long way, and is almost a kind of euphemism. Remember Little John,one of Robin Hood’s merry men in Sherwood Forest, who was actually really big?
Other joke nicknames might come from what a person does for a living, like a butcher might be called Chops,or an electrician Sparky. And can you work out why Mr. White is called Chalky,or Mrs. Fowler Chick?
Nicknames are everywhere—for politicians, for sports teams, even for buildings and countries. I’m sure you can think of many of these. (The Word Snoop is always happy to say she lives in the land of Oz!) You will have also used nicknames on the Internet, which are usually known as handles or user names.
Finally, there are the nicknames that tend to stick even if nobody remembers how they started or where they came from. The brilliant Brazilian football player Edson Arantes Do Nascimento, known all over the world by his nickname Pelé, does not know himself where the nickname began! This often happens in families when children are small. These can be the best sorts of nicknames—where they really belong to the person and make them feel loved. I wonder if you have some nicknames like that in your own family?