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.
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.
