senior-spectrum.com - Stan Gilliam

Have you ever stopped to wonder whatever happened to nicknames? In my youth having a nickname was sort of a membership badge, a sign of social acceptance, and those who lacked one were even known to make up one of their own.

A woman of my acquaintance so disliked her own given name that she adopted “Stormy” as her own. Having by chance learned the original, I could see why she dropped it.

In my own case, I reveled in the name “Beans,” which really had nothing to do with me or my eating habits. It was hung on me by a high school classmate who said I reminded him of a punch drunk old fighter he knew. Insulted? Of course not. It made me feel that I belonged.

Most nicknames were bestowed on the basis of ethnicity, appearance or behavior, and I suspect that’s the reason for their decline. We live in an era of political correctness, and it would not be PC, as they say, to bestow a nickname for any of those reasons.

For example, Sheriff Lou Blanas’ dad, Bill, was known among his intimates as “Greek,” even though he was half-Irish. That would never do today. And a vast number of young guys of Slavic ancestry were nicknamed “Doggie” because of the canard that the animals barbecued for their ethnic festivals were not young goats, as was claimed.

One of my classmates was possessed of a very red nose, and thus was given the name “Beacon,” which certainly would be a no-no in these enlightened times. Another, from a family in straitened financial circumstances, would go around after parties and salvage the contents of all the ashtrays, recycling them for future use. His nickname, right up until death overtook him in his 70s, was “Butts.”

I knew a “Mort,” so called because he reminded someone of Mortimer Snerd, Edgar Bergen’s ventriloquist dummy with the buckteeth. There was a “Weasel,” given the name because, well, he was thought to look like one. Another bore the cognomen of “Paintbrush,” not because of any artistic endeavors but because he used so much Stay-Comb on his straight hair that it stuck out in back like a dried paintbrush. No one would think of doing it today, but there was no concern over a schoolmate with poor vision being called “Bat.”

The nicknames have died, most of them, with those who bore them, and I suppose we live in a kinder world in these nicknameless times, but I find it kind of sad to think that something worthwhile has been lost along the way — the ability to laugh at ourselves.