I have a nickname.* You probably have a nickname. Your dog definitely has a nickname. Your mother, your husband, your kids. Your best friend in school. Someone probably came up with it one day and it stuck.

Or maybe you don’t. Maybe your nickname is just a shortened version of your actual name. My brothers are Al, J and Stu, we are rarely our full names unless being told off (doubly so if middle names are invoked!).

I love the etymology of the word nickname. Originally the word was ekename, meaning something like ‘additional name’, so you would have an ekename. Due to linguistic rebracketing, this became a nickname. The same rebracketing happened to a napron and a nadder and an ewt. English has a very mobile n, but rebracketing happens in many languages.

Anyway. That is the lingua nerd in me.

Nicknames in my own family aren’t really a huge thing. My two eldest brothers started calling each other Ziggy and Stussy when they were in their teens (as in Stardust and the clothing brand) but it never really caught on beyond each other. My father’s family all knew him as Wid. Nobody would ever expound on the reasoning for this, but it is suspected that he had a bit of a nighttime wetting problem as a child so this is some form of ‘widdle’. Either way, none of us was allowed to call him it!

My maternal grandmother was known as Tish to a lot of people. Her real name was Eva Grace. I am waiting to hear back from her younger sister as to any known reasons for the nickname …

My mother in law is known as Tiny to all and sundry. This is entirely due to her dimunuitive height (which she makes up for in personality)

Beyond that, and beyond the usual smatterings of Bills, Bobs, Joes, Edies, Jakes and Ems, we don’t seem to be an overly nickname-as-name family. Is this a European/American split, I wonder…?

*My best friend calls me Princess. And no, you may not know why, and no, you may not call me it.