Somehow and rather mysteriously over the past couple of ayears at my work I ceased to be called Renee and now I am referred to as Dr. B It is not something I particularly like, and in some ways I find it sort of dehumanizing, but it is what it is and I just respond when I am addressed. It isn’t the worst sort of nickname to have I guess.
Growing up in Luverne there were several guys my dad knew who had nicknames. Clarence Thone, the junkman, was called Abie, which was meant to be a slight since junkmen in literature and popular culture were often Jewish. One of the local mail carriers was called Ippy Olson. Ippy wasn’t his real name. I never knew what his real name was. I asked my mom whey he was called that and she just said “Oh, he is a real Ippy”. I never figured that one out. Then there was Skinny Kiebach. He was pretty thin. Soft Water Frakes was called that to distinguish him from his cousin, Marion. He owned a water softening business. Marion was a building contractor.
Husband has the nicknames of Kiffey or Dazzle. A good friend of mine is know to the world as Toots, when her real name is Denelle. I don’t know why we just can’t leave people with the names they were given to start out with.
Did you ever have a nickname? What are some of the best nicknames you have heard?
Trail Baboon 
Most of my friends know that my nickname is She. My birthname is Sherri. I became Sherri Lee in 8th grade then Sherrilee in 9th grade then legally Sherrilee at 21. My baby sister, who came along when I was 17 couldn’t get her tongue around Sherrilee when she started to talk and the result was “Sheeeee”. That’s what stuck. (My dad did call me Button when I was a toddler but that didn’t stick, thank goodness.)
YA was Pooter (or Poot) for her formative years. I have no recollection why I started that.
Guinevere and Nimue have dozens of nicknames between them!
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Oh let me count the ways!
As a child I was known as Barby by my mom, and my dad called me Barb or Barbadino. Various school nicknames included Barbwire, Babs, Barbarella, and then the Beach Boys et al. did the delightful Ba-Ba-Baaahh Ba-Bah-ber Ann. In college I was Brits. For a while when he was little, my son called me Barber; my step-son knows me as Babbyra.
These days I answer to Barb, Barbara, and here I am BiR…
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Her name was Magill…
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Golf course denizens are great for using nicknames. And if you don’t have one coming in (God forbid) someone will invariably make one up for you that you probably don’t like. Mine is Norbs. And I’m fine with it. One wag dubbed me “General Norbiega” several years back, but it only gets used by a few, most notably a golf buddy who passed away a few years ago. But he would usually just greet me as “General.”
I actually wrote a short story about golf and used several of the more memorable nicknames of club members at the time: Mighty Oak, Taco Jimmy, The Blind Pilot, and the Dog.
A few others at that club are/were Boomer, Bombie (like a bomb, silent B), Lefty, Zee, El Jefe (a guy named Jeff), Jake, Boke, DP, Big Cat, Fritz the Cat, Bushman, Rambo, Beezer, The Gong Show, Cookie (or Cookie Monster), Lumpy, Doc, Liz, etc. etc.
(Not?) Surprisingly, there is not a single woman member of the club who has a nickname that I know of. Maybe it’s a guy thing.
Chris in Owatonna
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
Jac
Jack
Jack Sprat (from the tall and skinny teen years)
Hi-Jack from the airliner hijackings of the late 60s
Jacque (my full name is Jacqueline)
I have had two days of dealing with insurance, portals and health care providers after getting letters from Lou’s long term care insurance first denying his claims (there were no claims) then letting us know they were sorry they declared him dead. The dead declaration denied him the abilty to pay the premium on line AND they stopped sending bills for it. While at the same time he gets emails saying he has a new document to download via the portal. Then a health care provider got a new phone system that.does.not.work so Lou cannot get telehealth care in the manner that the clinic has set up.
AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH.
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Wow!
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Yes Wow. It has been a day.
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insurance commissioner time
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Oh my Gosh!
It took me 6 months to get health insurance straightened out. With a lot of wait time in between while we waited for which ever office at the time had to process someone else’s claim. Its the worst!
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Spelling wise my first name is Deborah, not Debra. As a small child, I was Debby. By junior high school that had changed to Debbie, which stayed with me through college. By then, there were too many associations with Debbie that I didn’t like (Little Debbie snack cakes, Debbie Downer, Debbie Does Dallas) so I shortened it to Deb once out in the working world and I remain just Deb. The director of the NICU called me “Debs”, which I never liked but also never corrected him. And no one else gets to call me that.
My immediate family sometimes called me “Bobby” while I was still living at home. That’s because Daddy and Debbie sounded similar when being hollered.
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The very name I use here, Aboksu, is what I’m called in Taiwan. It’s certainly not the name that was laid upon me at my baptism in 1951. I grew into this one after 1997 (I’d had various other ones in Taiwan before then). Aboksu became a role and character. Since retiring and leaving Taiwan, I’m sometimes spousally accused of wanting to go back and “perform” Aboksu again.
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My family used to call me just Kris. I always liked it, still do. Sometime in the 80s or 90s, I’m not actually sure when, everyone at work and many of my friends started calling me by my full name. I signed my name that way and I just sort of went with it. Now it’s rare for someone to call me Kris. My youngest brother and his wife do, so does my aunt, but that’s about it. Some of my Owatonna (grade school) friends still call me that but I really only “see” them on facebook. My mom used to call me “AnniePannie” or just “Annie” when I was little. I think she wanted me to be an Ann or a Lynn, but Dad won.
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My avowed enemy in elementary, Chester, named me “Weasel.” Many years later my nephew started calling me “Uncle Weasel.”
Of course, he had no idea about how painful to me was that name. I did Shake It Off (I’m now a Swiftie) for a while but finally had to let him know my feelings and the back-story.
One very unfriendly guy at work, started calling me Ike, named after the candy Mike&Ike. His intentions were just to get a few digs in as he was jealous of my work ethic and production. I wasn’t bothered at all since my regular partner was Mike! That situation didn’t last long when I started to call myself Ike.
West became my nickname here in Ohio.
Okay. Now for the politics.
As an internet troll, I refer to 45 as XXXPresident Donny.
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When I was very young, My uncle used to call me “Willy Lump-Lump”. I didn’t give it any consideration and it never occurred to me that it had any cultural relevance. I’ve since discovered that Willy Lump-Lump was a Red Skelton persona.
He was an inebriate character which seems like an odd association to make with a little boy but we’ll let it pass…
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The older sister of a friend of mine had the Christian name of Cindy, but she was always called Bun, short for Honey Bun.
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The same friend had a brother named Ronald who goes by Rick, and a sister named Paula who was always called Penny. My friend was the only one of the kids in the family who didn’t have a name other than her original one.
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Pretty much always just ‘Ben’. A few random people call me ‘Benny’ and it depends how much a like them as to whether I allow that. Every now and then ‘Benji’.
There was some old show with a rat named Ben that people would bring up once in a while. And maybe a bear?
At one job, just for a month or so, I was ‘Spanky’. Because he was one of the little rascals.
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The first rat movie was called Willard. Ben was the sequel.
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And the bear was Gentle Ben.
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Oh my gosh… I didn’t need to know this! Haha!
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I mean Michael Jackson singing that.
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I’m not sure if it’s my face or what, but people just give me nicknames. It’s happened pretty much my whole life. My actual name that few call me is Ellen. So here we go: jelly bean (parents) and my mom still calls me Jelly for short (at 53 yo) …El…Els….Big L….Nator (short for terminator IDK why lol) ….E…and my husband calls me Belle and has since we met 16 years ago. 🙂
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