The Giving of Nicknames
If you don’t want a nickname to stick, don’t answer to it
My twin sister is named Sharon, but I don’t call her that. I call her Ninga, which is not a misspelling of ninja, in case you wondered. The “g” is hard. It’s pronounced Neenga.
It began when I added a suffix to her name — when she was being very Sharon, she was sharoning. Sharoning, of course, is the act of being Sharon. But adding suffixes is fun, as it turns out, so eventually, I stacked a couple more syllables on there. For a brief time, she was Sharoningapor.
After that, it got shortened back down to Ninga.
That was in late high school, early college. The name stuck. For one thing, she likes being called Ninga. It has become her identity: Dr. Davis by day, Ninga by night.
Her husband calls her Ninga. Her grandchildren call her Ninga (well, the one who can talk calls her Ninga. The other is too young to call her anything yet). All of her in-laws call her Ninga. She feels weird and creeped out when people call her Sharon.
My best friend didn’t embrace her nickname quite so wholly. Her name is Angel. For awhile, I alternated between Grangel and Algae. Eventually, the two were combined, and she became Gralgae. Only Ninga and I call her that, which is a shame. I should have worked harder to at least get her rotten brother to pick up the nickname and start using it.
I love it when nicknames stick. My brother John calls my older sister Art. Her real name is Sherry, but when they were young, he started calling her random names to see if she would answer to them. She did. She has now been Art for nearly 50 years. She is Aunt Art to two of her nephews.
I bring this up because yesterday, someone bought me a coffee. The message that went with it was “Not too shabby, tabby.” It occurred to me in that moment that all of my friends have failed me. No one has given me a cat-themed nickname. Tabby. I’ll answer to it. I promise.
I do have an occasional nickname. When I was really young, the twin called me Seeva. I wish Seeva had stuck around longer because it’s kind of cool, like a character in a fantasy novel. But Seeva fell by the wayside (whatever the wayside is) and I was nicknameless for years. At some point, though, Ninga and her husband started calling me Beelah. I’m not always Beelah, or Sheila the Beelah, or occasionally Sheilars, but sometimes I am.
Sometimes, I am a pronoun: She. My favorite cousin calls me She She.
What about you? Do you have a nickname? And how many people actually call you by your nickname? Do you embrace the nickname or do you dislike it?
