ARE YOU WHAT SOMEONE ELSE CALLS YOU?

Not a Terra post this time, but a Terra-inspired post, and a kind of follow up to an earlier post I had written concerning names This post, is more about nick names, or to start off, pet names, in the very literal sense of that term.

Yes, my pets have pet names, nick names. No, I don't dress my pets up in cute costumes or throw them birthday parties or write this blog in my dogs "voices" but I do have nick names for them. Our first dog was Gigilo, so that became shortened to Gigs; that seems pretty obvious and I don't know it if really counts as a nickname. Hayley often gets "Hales" especially when we need her attention quickly. I am often called Vic, a contraction of Victor and a very select few people call me V.J. my first two initials; it is also how I sign my name ... does that count as a nick name? Probably not.

But Hayley also has a nick name, we often call her "Beans" or "Miss Beans". This comes from when she was very young and very small, a tiny black and white fluff ball overflowing with border collie energy and prone to jumping crazily about. To Collette, it reminded her of a jumping bean ... We also call her Schmaley, which comes from Hayley Schmaley, in a sing song sort of way . My friend John the dog trainer thinks any variation of your dog's name is not really a nick name; John disdains the notion of giving your dogs nick names. So Schmaley may not be a nick name, but Beans certainly is. Terra already has a nickname. Collette started using Terra-Misu, again in a sort of sing song sort of way, particularly when trying to coax or gain her attention. So, according to John, this would not be a nickname. Recently I've taken to calling her monkey, for something so cute that can be so much trouble. Vic or V.J. would not be nicknames for me. Variations of the name seem a logical sort of thing. But something like Beans or Beanie would be a pure nick name, stemming from behaviour or incident.

Gypsy had a nick name. We called him G Man or even G Spot ... hey, easy now, this is a family blog .. well, no it isn't but we will keep this particular post g-rated (take a deep breath, just let that horrible pun wash over you like a warm bath and it will soon pass). Again, you consider those names variations of his name. So .. nick name or not nick name?

We've all had nick names I'm sure. Many of them start when we are young, some we leave behind and some stick with us till the end. Certainly a lot of them come as variations of our name. In school I was often called Victor Vicious, this was mildly derisive, it stemmed from a cartoon (or maybe TV commercial) character from that time (Yes, there was TV back then, shut up). Later, as I got a little older, and started to grow my hair out around Grade Six (hey, it was the sixties what can I tell you) I got, of course, Vicky. We won't count those as nick names.


When I was quite small, and I just had the two older brothers, my grandfather gave us all nick names, all starting with the letter B. I was Buckshot, I think Edward was Buster and I can't for the life of me remember what Vincent was called. At any rate, mine was the only that stuck in any way. To the day she died, my mother would still call me Buckshot ... oh, and her other favorite nickname for me was Burn out ... so your lifestyle can also influence your nickname, as well as your name.

In school I knew a kid called Chopper, because he would take any perfectly respectable a CCM bike and transform it into a pedal powered "chopper" style behemoth. I knew a girl who liked to be called Barbie because she was tall, thin and blonde ... we often speculated it it was also because she had an alarming lack of genitals but as I said, this isn't that kind of post.

Physical attributes are another popular inspiration for nicknames. I knew this biker type dude, big as a double wide trailer, with a ginger red beard ... yeh, shockingly he was called Big Red. I knew another rather large gentleman, first name Victor, and myself, well only my mouth has ever been called large .. yup, meet the Big Victor and Little Victor show .. sigh.

Just by casual observation, it seems that more men than women have nicknames, at least ones that persist into adulthood. I could be wrong about this, but I know more guys with nicks than women; again, I won't count derivations like Vicki from Victoria. Though I once knew a girl named Catherine O'Toole and I always thought it such a lovely name; however, the young lady preferred to be called Toolie ... this was a long time ago, I have lost touch with her and I'm hoping she's seen the error of her ways.

Nicknames, though, do seem to be more prevalent in the masculine realm. I've written about Rio Bravo, one of my favorite movies. All the main characters are known by their nicks: Dean Martin is Dude, Walter Brennan is Stumpy, Ricky Nelson is Colorado, Angie Dickinson is Legs and John Wayne is Chance; although Chance is the character's last name, it is used more like nick.

So it seems that most nicks are given to us but then we had Toolie who created her own. How common is that? I suppose there are people who are dissatisfied with their names and want something different. Anyone know an example like that? I have a sister named Venus (ok, it was the sixties or something) but learned to bear with the childhood abuse to become comfortable with it, so no self imposed nick name for her. I knew a girl in high school drama class who wanted to be called Scarlett, as in Scarlett O'Hara; let's just say that many of our dreams often go unrealized.

I'd love to hear some nicknames, where they came from, do you use them, how to people respond .. I'm sure Terra will bet more, but we have recognize a limit. Even border collies can absorb so much.