# What happened to the nicknames "Tex" and "Red" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 10, 2011, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-nicknames-tex-and-red/584959 "2011-06-10T10:39:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2011, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-nicknames-tex-and-red/584959/41 "2011-06-13T18:21:20Z")
Just a few observations from my life: I come from a rather large extended Italian-American family on my mother’s side. This culture was rather nickname friendly - my mother and all of her siblings had nicknames in wide use in the family and to a degree beyond it. My oldest aunt preferred her nickname to her given name, and would get annoyed with people who called her by it. This has been reduced in later generations but hasn’t completely vanished. For instance, I have a nephew who goes by his initials. Nicknames are pretty freely handed out in the military - in fact, my handle here is a nickname I picked up in the Navy on the USS Monterey. And I would argue that online pseudonyms should be considered nicknames as well, at least to a degree. ---
**Author:** ![Dignan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f07891/32.png) [@Dignan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dignan)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-nicknames-tex-and-red/584959/42 "2011-06-14T03:27:41Z")
There was an article in the New York Times about the decline of nickname use. [Like Magic, Great Sports Nicknames Are Disappearing](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/sports/great-sports-nicknames-like-magic-are-disappearing.html). Here’s part of the theory, mostly a change in society, and naming trends: > [@the article](#): > > According to the Social Security Administration, the 10 most popular baby names for boys in 1956 represented 31.1 percent of the total born. In 1986, around the time many of today’s athletes were born, the top 10 represented only 21.3 percent of the total. In 2010, the number dropped to 8.4 percent. > > “Nicknames are less needed today because given names themselves are so much more varied than they used to be,” said Evans, the Bellevue psychology professor. ---
**Author:** ![Darryl\_Lict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-nicknames-tex-and-red/584959/43 "2011-06-14T05:03:53Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > There was a new freshman who went to a party in Isla Vista, the student ghetto beside UCSB. Being new there, he wasn’t up on all the local oddities, and he leaned back while sitting on the deck, and promptly [fell off the deck and down the cliff](http://www.geol.ucsb.edu/faculty/sylvester/UCSB_Beaches/IVCLIFFS/IVclifferosion2.html). He was fine, but had a new nickname: Cliff. Do we know each other or did you hear that story from me on these boards? Or even weirder, are there two Cliffs? Cause Cliff is a buddy of mine, and I didn’t know it wasn’t really his name until about 3 years later. I actually know two people who fell off the cliffs in IV and survived. Usually about one person a year dies from falling off the cliff. The other guy actually broke two legs and clung to a boulder all night, survived high tide, and was found by a jogger in the morning. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-nicknames-tex-and-red/584959/44 "2011-06-14T22:29:34Z")
> [@Soliloquy](#): > > People keep trying to call my red-headed son Red… Yanks are weird… around here we’d call him “Blue”. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-nicknames-tex-and-red/584959/45 "2011-06-14T22:41:01Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > Baseball culture, internally, is pretty devoted to nicknames. In many organizations, virtually _everybody_ gets a nickname, even if it’s just a pointless and stupid-sounding diminution of their surname. “Tex” for Teixeira was pretty much inevitable. The main difference is that this is a _good_ nickname and is thus known and used outside the dugout. I’d say it was inevitable because most people would look at the name “Teixeira” and have absolutely no idea how to pronounce it. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Ford is the lone Whitey. What about Whitey Herzog? Or was that his real name? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2011, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-nicknames-tex-and-red/584959/46 "2011-06-15T23:30:29Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > …What about Whitey Herzog? Or was that his real name? See post #31. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-nicknames-tex-and-red/584959.md?page=2)