I have always enjoyed nicknames, as do most people, as long as they are good-natured and in no way malicious or insulting. The kind I mean are those encountered on the matchless pages of P G Wodehouse – Pongo Twistleton, Tuppy Glossop, Bingo Little or Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, usually denizens of the Drones Club, members of Bertie Wooster’s social circle, and “up to a lark as a rule” in Betjeman’s phrase. Somehow their names are appropriate to their genial adventures in love and confrontations with an array of formidable aunts.
These names are, alas, fictional and when harsh reality butts in, the good-natured nickname tends to fade away. History has a full house of nicknames. The Emperor Gaius Caligula (Little Boot) acquired his nickname as a young boy, but he grew up to be a very naughty boy indeed, and so atrocious were his atrocities that the moment he shuffled off this mortal coil had to be accelerated by his Praetorian Guard in 41 AD.
At least the church hierarch St John Chrysostom (Golden-mouthed) had a complimentary nickname in honour of his alleged eloquence, but his talent was often used in anathematising Jews and alleged heretics. On his death in 407 AD he left behind hundreds of homilies and many treatises. These, together with his ascetic lifestyle, make it unlikely that St John, despite his nickname, was a fun person to my shallow tastes and indeed all the furiously disputing early church fathers were a rum bunch, getting into a lather about Arianism, homoousios and the True Essence, when they should have been taking a relaxing dip in the Med.
The Byzantine historians dished out nicknames, often posthumously. Justinian II The Slit-Nosed earned his moniker by being restored to the throne after suffering the unlovely Byzantine custom of mutilation by his enemies. Later Leo The Iconoclast started a controversy that bedevilled the Empire for over a century. His even more enthusiastically iconoclastic son Constantine V Copronymos (The Dung-Named) allegedly excreted into his baptismal font, but this is perhaps a later libel spread by the iconodule faction, who revered icons. Iconoclasm finally ended in the reign of Michael III The Drunkard and emperors turned to more conventional activities like Basil II The Bulgar-Slayer, who restored the empire’s fortunes for many generations and cruelly suppressed the vulgar Bulgars, once taking 15,000 prisoners and blinding 99 out of every 100. Charming!
Further west the nicknamed flourished. The Norsemen were particularly fond of them and with the likes of Thorfinn Skull-Splitter on the rampage, I have much sympathy for sad Ethelred The Unready, caught on the hop by the axe-wielding horde. I believe it is an Icelandic saga which sings of Herjolf Hrokkineista (Wrinkled-Scrotum), whose best long-boat days were probably behind him, and whose little secret evinces wry recognition from many males of a certain age. Rather later Edward I Longshanks was far from lovable, especially towards the Scots – his unlucky son got the come-uppance his father deserved at Bannockburn in 1314.
The 18th century gives us Turnip Townsend, the inventor of 4-crop field rotation, then usually wheat, barley, turnips and clover which greatly enhanced the productivity of British agriculture. This useful comestible was put to less agreeable work when the red-top press unfairly vilified England football manager Graham Taylor with the sobriquet Turnip-Head after a run of dud results, complete with a mock-up misshapen face and sprouting ears. We Scots enjoy turnips too, with haggis, bashed neeps and tatties a Burns supper staple as someone recites hilarious Holy Willie’s Prayer.
Late Victorian sensibilities were offended by Lord Alfred Bosie Douglas, a nursery nickname, though Nanny would certainly not have approved of his louche lifestyle, - the notorious liaison with Oscar being one of the more respectable. In our own time Boofy Gore, 8th Earl of Arran, was a newspaper columnist who crusaded in the Lords with bills to reduce the age of homosexual consent and to stop the culling of badgers. On his deathbed he said “I could never understand why my buggers' bill got overwhelming support in the House and my badgers’ bill hardly any” A friend remarked “Boofy, is it possible that there are not many badgers in the House of Lords?”
The current crop of nicknames would include John Two-Jags Prescott, once deputy prime minister but reduced now to displaying his boxing skills in a TV commercial for car insurance. Fred The Shred Goodwin, erstwhile infallible master of RBS, now keeps a low profile after running his bank and his own career into the ground and no doubt many other careers too on the way down.
I return to memories of boarding school nicknames and most were genial enough. I recall Busters, Barrels and Beefers (usually the better-upholstered), a Stinker – indicating caddishness rather than malodorousness- Shorty, someone tall, or Speedy. Masters acquired names like Bonkers and the more etymologically obscure Zeep or The Oincks. I do cringe at the occasional prep-school cruelty. I recall an entirely inoffensive muddy-complexioned 9-year old. This hapless lad was known ignominiously as Fart.
SMD
9.8.11
Copyright Sidney Donald 2011
My own favourites are Eric Bloodaxe and Swain Forkbeard and the names given to some of the early French kings, like Charles the Fat and Louis the Lazy, although I will now add Herjolf Hrokkineista to the list.
ReplyDeleteThe estimable author and his readers may well know this, but ‘nickname’ is a corruption of ‘eke-name’, or supplementary name. It shows metanlysis at work, a process by which word boundaries change. This instance is the reverse of its typical occurrence in English, when the initial ‘n’ of a word is mistaken for the ‘n’ in ‘an’, as in ‘adder’ (a nadder), ‘apron’ (a napron) and ‘orange’ (a norange).