Mike Kerrigan: The man doesn’t find the nickname. The nickname finds the man.
.jpg "The cast of “Seinfeld,” including Jason Alexander (second from the left) who played George Costanza - a man in search of a nickname.")
Tuesday, Sept. 27, is National Nickname Day which, unless your nickname is Cliff Clavin or Gandalf, you probably did not know. It is a propitious time to discuss the two immutable rules when it comes to nicknames.
First, you cannot nickname yourself, no matter how badly you want to. The temptation to name yourself can be strong, but as surely as you haven’t heard the end of things when you fall into a koi pond around teenagers, it is not appropriate. Only your good mates who know you well can do that.
Second, when your boon companions do issue you a handle, it won’t highlight your greatest virtue; it never does. Nonetheless, it’s yours to keep without remonstrance. It will not celebrate your lowest vice, either. Most likely, it will fall somewhere in between.
Done properly, a nickname captures your essence in a good-natured, relatable way. It fits you honestly, like snug sweatpants, the too frequent wearing of which within my friend group, for instance, might earn you the tag “Baryshnikov.”
This is why it’s good counsel never to trust anyone with too slick-sounding a moniker. One or both of these rules likely were violated. Take someone with an alias like “Ace” or “Casanova.” It’s probable he named himself or, like a baseball pitcher impertinently shaking off his catcher, lobbied for a label other than what was originally offered. Either way, the sobriquet oozes inauthenticity, which is exactly the opposite of what a nickname should convey.
These two rules are not difficult to remember, far easier than, say, recalling whether Eddie Rabbitt loves a rainy night and Eddie Money has two tickets to paradise, or vice versa. Yet remembering them is important. In a memorable “Seinfeld” episode, George Costanza learned the danger of forgetting these nicknaming lessons the hard way.
He tried to arrogate cool-sounding “T-Bone” to himself at work, only to see it fall like divine grace onto a colleague. George then bullied his workmate into returning the nickname. Watching George gesticulate with primal aggression as he tried to reclaim T-Bone, his co-workers recalled Koko, the famous gorilla who’d mastered sign language. Koko, not T-Bone, stuck to George, for the man does not find the nickname. The nickname finds the man.
Over the years, I have honored the universe’s dual commandments on nicknames. I’ve resisted the urge to call my own number, and taken pride in the amiable monikers I’ve dished out to friends along the way: Bones cracks his neck in an alarming manner. Hamlet takes forever to make even the simplest of decisions. Frodo goes about barefoot far too much for a grown man. Snacks is tiny, but seems to eat his weight daily. Chowdah lives in the South now, but his vocal chords never left Massachusetts. And like the seasonal sandwich, McRib passes into and out of my life.
I think I’ve performed my nicknaming duties well. Each friend has accepted his cognomen without complaint or, if unhappy, has shown the restraint demanded of a well-behaved Kool-Aid Man in a room full of freshly installed drywall. Of course, this show of self-control by them is good, because nothing makes a cheeky nickname stick like undue protest.
Make that three immutable rules of nicknaming.
This story was originally published September 21, 2022 at 11:50 AM with the headline "Mike Kerrigan: The man doesn’t find the nickname. The nickname finds the man.."