Nicknames: Cadit a gratia

    Fish, Crusty, Elwood, Dave-O, The Dark Lord, DaveStarr, Super Dave, Barry, and Turbo are just a few of the monikers that have been attached to me at some point in my life. There was even one very unpronounceable Eskimo-Aleut nickname given me by a group of tiny native ladies. All I know is it had something to do with my, well, seventeen year old posterior.

    We are branded with these names in a variety of ways. It can be a play on words or a joke gone too far. A girl’s teasing of a boy she has a crush on, or vice versa. It can stem from our actions or our profession. A common way of gaining a nickname is by where we are from or live. It can also be in the form of irony. But, on a rare occasion, it’s just to hide an embarrassing name our parents slapped on us at birth, ensuring us a difficult yet far from uninteresting childhood by bringing out every lurking bully from the shadows.  

Bartholomew "Bat" Masterson 

“Bartholomew? Well, Bat, that’s a beautiful name. There’s no reason to be ashamed of a twenty five dollar handle like that. Maybe I’ll just call you that all the time. ‘Bartholomew’. “

                                 -Wyatt Earp (Kevin Costner) upon finding out Bat Masterson’s real name  

                                                                                           

    

  However we get them, some may be for only a brief period of time while others could last a lifetime. Some people will try to give a person a nickname but it ultimately doesn’t stick. Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott told me that fellow poker player, John Shipley, really wanted a nickname. One day while they were playing in Vegas, Dave noticed that Shipley had been sitting on a magazine. Devilfish, beeing curious, asked him why and John’s reply was that the chairs made his “arse sweaty”. Naturally Dave started to call him “Sweaty Arse”. I asked if the name stuck and was sadly informed by Ulliott that "No it never stuck. But the magazine sure did!" 
      Others have tried to place a new moniker on someone where it was painfuly obvious that they were trying too hard to make it stick. I remember Mariners color announcer Ron Fairly (who many dubbed “Captain Obvious”) trying to give starting pitcher Freddy Garcia the nickname of “The Bear”. He tried relentlessly to get people to call him that. Over and over he would insist on calling him “The Bear” during the broadcasts. This went on for quite some time until one day people started calling Garcia “Chief”. Why? Because someone in the clubhouse one day decided he looked like actor and artist, Will Sampson, from One Flew Over the Cuckcoo’s Nest. I never heard Fairly say “The Bear” again. He seemed to finally give it up but I have a feeling he was a little upset by it.

Thomas Austin Preston Jr. "Amarillo Slim"

"It's a good thing he did, because Amarillo Slim sounds a heck of a lot better than Turkey Tom or Arkansas Austin.” 

                                                     - Amarillo Slim (Thomas Austin Preston, Jr)

Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige

“My feet ain't got nothing to do with my nickname,

but when folks get it in their heads that a feller's got big feet,

soon the feet start looking big.”

                                                    - Satchel Paige

Bob "Death To Flying Things" Ferguson 

     To me, some of the best nicknames have come from the worlds of Baseball, and Poker, however, sports in general is home to many of the greats*. There you will find the likes of The Big Unit, Oil Can, The Minister Of Defense, Shoeless Joe, Amarillo Slim, The Sheriff, The Admiral, Mailman, Texas Dolly, Eskimo, The Mouth, The Magician, Jennicide, and the aforementioned Devilfish. However, my absolute favorite has to be Bob “Death to Flying Things” Ferguson (also shared with Jack Chapman)
     If you examine the world of music, and specifically from the Jazz and Blues genre, there are such classics as Muddy, Leadbelly, Bing, T-Bone (Walker), Peg Leg, Cootie, Count, Tootie, and Satchmo. I could continue until the mighty Mississippi herself dried up, but you get the idea.


When thinking of nicknames we must not ignore those from the pages (and screens) of fiction. Here lurking are those known to us as Nuke Laloosh, Tin Cup, The Swede, Wolverine, Neo, Oddjob, Worm, and of course Juggernaut, bitch!
      History too is littered with great nicknames. Be them attached to the good, the bad, or the pure evil, their names stick with us. Such names as Vlad the Impaler, Deadwood Dick, Ike, Le Petit Coporal, Mad Monk, Iron Lady, The Maid of Orleans, The Bard, Old Hickory, and Scarface will continue to be known for many generations to come. In what has to be one of the best historical nicknames belongs to Eugene Bullard, otherwise known as "The Black Swallow of Death". Eugene was one of only two black combat pilots who served in WWI (the other was Ottoman pilot Ahmet Ali Celikten.)

"The Black Swallow of Death", Eugene Bullard

                                                                    “You're not allowed to give yourself a nickname.

                                                                            This holds true in life as well as in poker.”

                                                                  
                                                                                                          - Richard Roeper

  It is true, a person shouldn't give themselves a nickname. It's bad nickname etiquette to do so but it does happen. Luis “Honey Boy ”De Valle, Austin “Subzero” Rivers, Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr., and Kobe “Black Mamba” Bryant are examples of people giving themselves nicknames.

     Perhaps even I in a small way have been guilty of this. Whenever I would write something about poker on Facebook or Twitter, I took to signing off with the name of “Sisyphus”. I will say that I never actually claimed it to be a nickname. Weak, I know. This persona, or alter ego if you will, came from the far too often occurrence of my chip stack rising, then falling, then rising, then falling, rising…. You see the pattern? One day during our weekly home game I exclaimed that I must be the Sisyphus incarnate of the poker world, where promptly there was some agreement among my friends.
   Some names become too commonplace and overused. Many of the most common have been around for as long as we have had names and are still to this day used. Labels such as Rocky, Red, Tiny, Hoss, Wild Bill, Papi, Black Jack, Sugar, Hitman, Snake, Tex, Buster, and some form of "Kid" have all become transformed into the cookie cutter variety.

Look at all those CHILDREN! 

                                           




                                                              "No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames."
                 
                                                                                        - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We have come to a point where nicknames are beyond the cookie cutter variety in lameness. With the advent of computer machines, and the interwebs, a whole new brand of patheticism in the nicknaming ability has sunk to an all time low.
 
Online poker was a large part of my life for a while and I can tell you I have seen some of the worst handles being used by my fellow players. What is even more maddening is that when a small few of those players get to be known well enough, I am then forced to see those online handles being used in print and on T.V. (Durrrr.)
 I have known many online players with terrible online names. No, I won't go into detail. I will however, give one of my favorites: AKQJ2DAMMIT! Anyone who plays knows the frustration and can identify with this name. It makes for a great online handle, but not necessarily a good nickname. That is true for many of the names floating around the vacuum of cyberspace. You can use it online, sure, but please do not bring it into the real world.

   The other type and most common form of the watered-down cheap whiskey kind of names are  when an "ie", "ey", or "y" is simply tacked onto to the end of a person's first or last name. This seems to be the modern day practice of baseball clubhouses. Where we once had notables like The rocket, The Ryan Express, and Pee Wee, we now have Coney, Davey, Jonesy, Johnnie, Marky, and Mattie. I sometimes wonder exactly how many "Hendu"'s there have been simply due to the shared last name of Henderson? Too many, I'm sure.
     Now, I understand many of those are simply terms of endearment and not true nicknames per se, I take no particular issue when it comes to such a reason. It is when pure laziness and lack of creativity are the clear reason that I become saddened, irritated, and curious as to how the great nicknames fell from grace.

   Let us have no more A-Rod's, I-Rod's, Pudge's, or D-Wade's, No more ScarJo's, JLaw's, or B-Rad's.
I long for the Bone's, Ginga Ninja's, Puddin' Head's, and the Catfish's". Give me the The Rooster's (Red or plain),  Bleedin' Gums', or Reign Man's. Remember the Galloping Ghost's, Blood And Guts', Scourge Of God's, the Impaler's, and Red Barron"s. (True, some of those weren't exactly wonderful people but hey, their nicknames sure were!)

Out of the ashes, like the phoenix, I want to see the art form of the nickname rise to it's former glory.







* While writing this I couldn't help but wonder; how is it that Cortez Kennedy was never called "Conquistador"?