This probably is a stupid question for those of you well versed in american politics, but why is GW Bush nicknamed dubya (or dubyia)?
Kotick
It refers to his middle initial, W, and distinguishes him from his father, George H(erbert) W(alker) Bush.
Right… like in how you pronounce the w, I get it now, but it is not that obvious for us foreigners. Thanks 
K
How do you say it? Doobla-vay?
My sister (amnesty international member and not a fan of Mr Bush) doesn’t like the fact that her intials are DW which gives me a reason to call her Dubya 
Nope, more like double-vee.
K
Also, “dub-yuh” is considered a sloppy, unsophisticated way of pronouncing the name of the letter, which should be “double-U”, which Bush’s detractors find appropriate in the context.
Also, he used the “W” in campaigning, actually using signs that consisted of the single letter W, and saying at times that the “W was for women”.
Just like nucular… :dubious:
K
I also believe it’s his family name from his parents.
He’s ‘Dubya’ to distinguish himself from his father.
Dorothy is ‘Doro’.
John Ellis Bush is ‘Jeb’.
So there’s a family tendency, my guess is from GHWB, to assign nicknames. A tendency GWB seems to share from reports.
There’s also brothers Neil and Marvin and a died-in-childhood sister Pauline. But I don’t see much info on naming issues for those three.
Personally, I like to think of them as Bush the Elder, Bush the Younger.
Eleven posts with no bashing–a new record?
Molly Ivins, a nationally syndicated columnist out of Dallas, started refering to him as “Dubya” in her columns back in 1995 according to this. While she probably wasn’t the first to use the “Texas W” as the basis for a shorthand nickname to differentiate him from the elder Bush, she popularized it.
This entire thread has been a bash, after a fashion. HIs supporters don’t call him Dubyuh.
But they don’t deny that people call him ‘Dubya’, do they? Do they deny that that’s his own pronunciation of “W”? Maybe so.
So if ER2 was to knight him she’d say “I dub ya dubya”
Or summink
While precise diction calls for “double-you” as the spoken name of the 23rd letter, the variants on Standard American that I’ve personally encountered use “double-yah” in rapid colloquial speech. “I said Oscar Wilde … double-ya eye ell dee ee!”
Apparently some Texian dialects clip “double-yah” to “dubya” and GHWB used this as a pet name for his quasi-namesake son, with friends, then Molly Ivins, and then the left half of the populace following suit.
It was mentioned in passing above but I just want to clarify for you foreigners. This is not how most Americans pronounce the letter w. It is an exaggerated Texas accent W. Most Americans will say double-u.
I did type that before Poly replied.
It’s also standard form for many people in the Midwest. Including me.