'A Way of Contracting the Names of His Friends'

I’m fortunate in never having had a nickname that stuck. My step-grandfather and no one else called me Perfesser because I was always reading. I earned another one-person nickname in college. A friend called me Wyatt, as in Wyatt Kurp. Our dormitory swarmed with nicknames, most of which were too unseemly to reproduce here. One guy did massive quantities of acid for weeks on end, and the only thing he could eat was Goober Jelly, peanut butter and grape jelly swirled together in a jar. He ate it with a spoon. We called him “Goob.”

Nicknames are not new. They have always been at once affectionate and cruel. In A Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides (1785), Boswell recounts the events of this date, Oct. 14, in 1773:

“When Dr. Johnson awaked this morning, he called ‘Lanky! having, I suppose, been thinking of [Bennet] Langton; but corrected himself instantly, and cried, ‘Bozzy!’ He has a way of contracting the names of his friends. [Oliver] Goldsmith feels himself so important now, as to be displeased at it. I remember one day, when Tom Davies was telling that Dr. Johnson said, ‘We are all in labour for a name to Goldy’s play,’ Goldsmith cried ‘I have often desired him not to call me Goldy.’”

Of course, when the nicknamed complains, his friends are likely to up the frequency of use. Best to keep quiet about it.