Anatomy of a Nickname

Nicknames are a funny thing. Sometimes you want one, but you just can't get people to call you by the name. Othertimes, you do something embarrassing and you are branded for the rest of your life.

I don't feel like my name is ripe for parody, but over the years, I have acquired a plethora of pseudonymns, so here are a few of my thoughts on those names that can be so hard to shake.

Nicknames can spring out of imaginative friends. My name is Reichard, pronounced with German emphasis. Someone I worked with thought that it might have a French sound, simillar to French-Canadian hockey great Maurice Richard. Well Mr. Richard was given the nickname "rocket," and with my name sounding like Richard, I was quickly branded "the rocket." In an act of sheer coincidence, my brother also was called "rocket" by his friends in college.

An aside, for some reason, it seems like famous people are given nicknames at a much higher rate than everyone else. It appears that everyone is looking to give sports stars a nickname. Take Miguel Cabrera, the Tiger's first baseman. There have been threads devoted to coming up with a nickname for the man. Sid the Kid, Sir Charles, the Mule, etc.

But it doesn't end with rebranding of famous hockey players, sometimes nicknames come out of neccessity. Working at a place with two people with the same name left the rest of us in a pickel. Everytime someone would say their names, both would respond. So nicknames became needed. Well, one was in the middle of growing a moustache, so he became 'Stache while the other had a last name containing the words Hitch. When the two combined, it sounds like a crime fighting duo the likes of the world has never seen.

Other times, if you do something memorable, you're going to be immortalized in your nickname. It could be as simple as being the person who always falls asleep first, so they become Doze. Or perhaps, after a night of drinking, you run around the block to speed up the alcohol process, then you get a name like Sprint. The best way to avoid nicknames you are embarrassed of is to not appear to be bothered by them. The only reason people are calling you that name is because it invokes some sort of reaction. If you pretend you aren't bothered by it, people aren't going to keep calling you it.

I've lived through my share of nicknames, some have stuck, some haven't, some have been flattering, others have been borderline mean. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow and stick one out.