Haven’t done much “branding” as an adult but in college we had a few:
One woman who wore contacts but always seemed to be blinking her eyes was called 'Blinky BoxHead." I don’t know where the “box head” part came from.
Another one, who did in fact share a remarkable resemblance, was called “Ms. Piggy” behind her back. And she knew about it.
When I went in for surgery recently the anesthesiologist looked about 18 and was very enthusiastic (he reeeeeally wanted to give me an epidural) he became “Skippy.”
The 12-year old looking intern who checked in on me daily was “The Puppy.”
The former controller (now vp) of our company was called by a co-worker “The Fat Controller” - years later I have to stop myself thinking about him as that since the person who coined the nickname is long gone, and he is no longer a controller.
One of my in-laws, Mr Mills, is something terrifying in the Masons. I might have called him Dark Satanic Mills once. I’ll probably be disappeared now. I love you all.
Husband used to be in a nerdy, surfy, sci-fi band. In grand nerdy tradition, they all had sci-fi nicknames. These days Vocoder Joe works in a library, so now he’s Barcoder Joe. I didn’t come up with that one, Joe, and stop vanity searching yourself.
Weird, I had a lecturer at college I called Dark Satanic Mills too, and came here to post just that.
Soap Opera Boy: he sits very close to me, and you can hear every personal conversation he has. Every time he has an argument with his wife, I hear every detail on this side. This is why I keep my headphones on.
We had a professor in law school widely nicknamed “mohawk”. He had the worst comb-over ever seen, slicked down with some sort of hair cream, and under the lights and heat of lecturing it would invariably stand up on end by the end of the lecture - just like an off-centre mohawk.
A few years back, at a dinner, the wife of our boss, who is to begin with, rather unattractive by any standard, showed up in a light greenish suit. My dear wife, having had a couple of cocktails, leaned across me, and asked in a not-so-quiet voice “holy shit, she wore the Shrek suit!” The name stuck.
I do this all the time, give out private nicknames to people.
The lady at my gym is Skinny European Running Lady She runs about an hour a day on the treadmill, is thin, but not drastically so, and the one time I spoke to her she sounded Eastern European.
The high maintenance looking blond soccer mom, also at the gym is Flashy
There’s others, those are the two that pop in my head now.
We had a guy who kept ringing up with moronic requests for information. His name was, let’s say, John Doe. We started calling him John Fucking Doe. Then he became JFD. Now we simply insert the F into the initials of any annoying person. It is great conversational shorthand.
We had a manager Sir Lunchalot - he was always OPAL - out, probably at lunch.
I have a friend I call Average Jack for the same sort of reason. He describes himself as average, but I still don’t call him that to his face.
Back in school my friend Steve went on a car trip with a couple other guys, one of whom, Patrick, sat in the front passenger seat while Steve sat in the backseat. Patrick talked incessantly, about nothing, the entire trip. Steve said the only way he got through the trip was by fantasizing that he garroted Patrick, the way Carlo was garroted in The Godfather. “Hello Carlo”, followed by ack, gasp, choke, death. After that, we all took to calling Patrick “Carlo”. Patrick never caught on that we were talking about him.
When I was a teenager three of my buddies and I went up to the lake for the weekend and stayed in a cabin that belonged to the next door neighbor of one of them. The neighbor’s name was Grady and we began calling each other Grady so that our own names lost significance that weekend and for a long time thereafter. Nowadays when somebody pisses me off in traffic, or otherwise, that person becomes Grady for as long as it takes to vent my wrath. It’s not always Grady, though. Sometimes it’s Gerald or Virgil. But Grady has special significance in that regard. He was the first.
In a review lecture about stress transformations - which are math you have to do to look at the effects of a load on something and switch it to a form that can be compared to standardized tables - the prof used a picture of an apple and a pear to indicate that without the transform, you were trying to compare apples to pears (I guess he couldn’t find a photo of an orange).
This was the third course in the curriculum that covered stress transformations and it’s something that was kind of expected to be known.
Some twit of a girl (always comes in late, prances around in fashions that make her look bad, has repeatedly shown herself to be kind of slow and stupid) asked a question that made it clear that she had no clue what the prof was talking about.
So my friend asks if I happen to have an apple or a pear handy…so he could throw it at her. Since then, we’ve been calling her Apples and Pears - we can’t decide which one suits her best.
This year we’ve also added Blueberries - the kid who asks weird little questions that aren’t really bad ones, but just have a tendency to be about 10 minutes behind the current lecture material.
There’s also Watermelon. We hate this guy. He sits at the very front of the room, thinks he’s smarter than all the profs, always asks his questions or makes comments in a condescending, assholish tone of voice…and usually turns out to be wrong.
I worked with two guys named Tony at one point. The were known as Tony the Red, who had red hair, and Tony Mellonhead. Tony Mellonhead had the biggest head you’ve ever seen. At the same post there was a married couple who embodied everything my organization holds dear. They were referred to as The Poster Children.
Why Watermelon?
Is it because you think Gallgher should smash his head with a sledge hammer?
Because we really, really hate this guy, and a watermelon would probably hurt and might shut him up for a bit? It’s a fruit theme…we come up with fruit to chuck at people who annoy us in class. Although your answer works too!
I’d really hate to meet “Durian”.
Old employer, long ago, we had a guy we called 30 grit because he was so abrasive.
We secretly called our kids Bummer and Flashback in the day. (I know. I know. It was nicer than beating them.)
I had a boss when I worked for the Army I called The Hand of God.
Another co-worker, a psychiatrist, was Ve Haf Vays of Making you Vell.
The woman next door with the ever-so-charming persona was Little Debbie Snack Cakes.
One naughty kitty was The Weasel.
Spouse is The Foot Dragger. Don’t tell.