Michael becomes Mike, Patricia becomes Pat - these are expected nicknames. But when Michael becomes Moose, that might take some explaining. Here’s your chance - share your (or someone you know) possibly perplexing nickname.
I was Fred when I was in the Navy. It’s nothing like any part of my names. One night (I worked mids) my team leader was telling our shop chief about something I’d done, and he blanked on my name, so he just said “So Fred here said…” and from then till I transferred out of that squadron, I was Fred.
I was OK with it - in fact, I have a mug (somewhere) that says Fred.
As an aside, that team leader was known for renaming people. He called one guy Stony because “You look like a Stony.” It was a fun time in my youth, nearly half a century ago…
People in high school decided to call me “Speedbump” and in college “Cap’n” and my SDMB handle is yet another one given to me that is totally unrelated to my given name or any variant thereof.
My nickname Frank is totally unrelated to my real name. I got it during frosh week a million years ago, when a new friend sized me up and, both of us being big Tom Waits fans, proclaimed that I was in need of some wild years.
Several people call me by by first name followed by Mexico. I don’t look Mexican to anybody until I mention that I am half Mexican, then they say it is obvious and then come the racist jokes. For these so called friends its a way to tell other people their is a non-white person in the room. And I’ve called them out on it.
My real friends know not to call me that, unless its to poke fun at the people who do.
In high school I was known as Lush (self-explanatory), or Queen Head (No! Not what you think!)
In my school, at the time, social groups were very well-defined and had names. The stoner group was called Heads, and my boyfriend was the de facto leader, sometimes called King Head, thus my nickname was a spin-off.
I swear.
I have two nick-names that aren’t even proper names, but both describe my personality in some way, not necessarily very flattering. I got them both at around 15, one by a friend and classmate, the other by a female friend who just made the name up, but in good spirit, this is a rather cutesy name. Both nick-names stuck, so today I have three different factions of my acquaintances each calling me by one of my nick-names or by my given name.
Yo! Frenchie! Over here! (i’m kidding)
I was Frankie in the 5th grade. Got tagged with that because I was wearing a tshirt with a picture of Frankenstein’s Monster and a quote that said, “School made me this way” while riding the bus to church camp. As a young legal adult I walked into my job with full hands and my wrap around riding sunglasses on and my boss instantly named me “Slick”. He even made an actual official name tag for me. Didn’t really take to that one though, refused to wear the tag.
Not based on given name but last name. There is a common nickname for men with my last name. All the guys in the family with this name got stuck with it. Father, uncle, a cousin, etc.
It was so bad in high school that on literally the last day of school senior year, we were being called up by the teacher in a class to turn in our textbooks. She called me by my given name. A friend since freshman year was amazed and turned to me to ask “You mean X isn’t your first name?”
Strangely, the FtGKids were never called this name. Apparently that was just an “old-fashioned” nickname.
For a bit in college I was called by a different first name. A prof somehow mis-remembered my name and started calling me by another name. The other kids starting calling my by that name. While that only lasted a short while, it did lead to part of my long term moniker of FtG.
Before I met my gf I hung out with two other guys my age. The three of us had nicknames. A younger guy started hanging around with us and he wanted a nickname. He was constantly pestering us to come up with a nickname for him.
One of us (“Paul”, how’s that for a nickname) scored four tickets to the Indy 500. While there Clem (his nickname) decided on a nickname for the younger guy, christening him “Jism”. Now Jism initially objected to the name, but I guess it grew on him. He eventually moved away and we never saw him again, but for a few years everybody knew him as Jism.
In high school, I was nicknamed “Pistol Pete” (after basketball player “Pistol” Pete Maravich), because “Pistol Pete” rhymes with my surname.
In college, some of the guys in my dorm nicknamed me “Herb” (after the nerdy character in an ill-fated Burger King ad campaign), and that name stuck hard for a year or two, to the point that some of the other people in our dorm didn’t actually realize that my name wasn’t Herb.
I had a classmate from 1st thru 8th grade who fancied herself a wit (she was half right) and she tried to give people nicknames. For example, the girl whose last name was Snyder was to be called Snydley. Nope, no one else did. She tried to stick me with a moniker based on my last name, but it, also, didn’t take. Mostly because no one really liked her. I was so glad that we went to different schools in 9th grade.
This comes from a job I had 30 years ago. I was in the office staff at a law firm. We were pretty close. The attorneys were generally friendly but not part of our clique.
Except for this one lawyer, who was not a bright bulb. His father was a legendary local figure, and the founding partner in our firm was a friend and accepted the son as a very junior attorney in his first job.
The other attorneys immediately recognized him as a gomer and kept their cordial distance, so he tried to cozy up to the staff. If he saw us trading jokes, he’d walk up in the middle of a laugh, start laughing himself, and then insert his own contribution as if he’d been there all along.
After a while, we started plotting how to embarrass him. The idea came up: let’s create a fake inside joke and see how long it takes for him to pick it up and start using it without understanding what it means.
The inside joke was that my nickname would suddenly be Goober. Or Goob for short. The other office staff would start calling me that, and we’d wait for this guy to notice. If he asked about it, our plot was foiled. But if he just started repeating it, our expectation was fulfilled.
Victory: he started using it on the second day.
But the downside was, I was Goober at that job from that day forward. It was funny at first. Then I was annoyed. Then I got used to it. I was Goober for years.
It was persistent enough that the other senior partner took me into his office and asked about it. I brought his legal secretary in, and we explained the plan. He stared at us in silence, and then said in an absolutely flat deadpan: that’s hilarious.
We asked him not to tell the founding partner. He said of course not.
When I was real young my brother couldn’t pronounce my name, it came out SuSu. So all through childhood I was a boy named SuSu. My best friend’s mom still calls me that.
