If your name is Nick, what's your nickname?

As promised, this week I'll be talking about nicknames. Almost everyone I know, at some time in their life, has been called by another name than their given name. Sometimes it plays on the given name; occasionally it can be attributed to a positive asset of your personality or possibly some sort of determent in your personality. For instance, when I was a little girl, not just short but very tiny, most of my nicknames focused on how little I was. When I was in elementary school, most of the kids called me "Squirt", which also happened to be a bottle of soda at the time. Going into Junior High, I was a mass of freckles, my hair had turned even redder, and my nickname at Girl Scout camp that year was "Freckles" because that was what everyone commented on and that's what everyone called me. When I got older my nicknames mostly focused on my given name. Two names were used which I absolutely hated: the first one was "Little Darky" which was a play off of a popular children's story when we were young. The other name was "Dork" or "Dorky", until I not so politely informed them exactly what that word meant in a foreign language (trust me it was not applicable to me). As far as nicknames that I gave myself over the years, the first nickname that I had for myself was "Buddy", based on the name of a very, very tall, but gentle man from my church whom I adored. His nickname was "Bud". My Mom's nickname for me when I was little was "Missy" and that is the original name she had thought of for me. She called me that until I was 12 years old when I finally told her my name wasn't "Missy" it was Darci. She still occasionally calls me that. Both of my parents always called me "Toots" and my Dad was once of the few people who could get away with calling me "Darce". When my mother was thoroughly disgusted with me, she would call me "Helpless Hannah". Small wonder I have never liked the name Hannah.


One of my uncle's friends was always known to have a cigarette in his mouth, and you may easily assume his nickname really was "Smokey". I never knew what his given name was. Another of his friends was called "Diaps" which was short for diapers - aha - he was the baby of the family. He was a grown man who was known by that nickname until he died; it was even mentioned in his obit in the paper. I had an uncle that was known as "Uncle Drag" not because he dressed in drag, it was because his daughter commented when she was a child that he had to wear suspenders to hold up his pants because without suspenders the pants would slip under his fat belly and drag on the ground. "Daddy Draggy Drawers" became Uncle Drag to the rest of the family. I also had another uncle whose nickname at work was "Bugs" like Bugs Bunny but not because of Bugs Bunny or beatle bugs, but because he liked to tease everybody and he was always "bugging" everybody. When I was out and about with my uncle and someone called him "Bugs" I knew it was someone from his work.

Another person who acquired a nickname from childhood was one of my brother's ex-wives whose nickname was "Pixie" because even though she wasn't short she was very tiny, very petite with a short haircut, and looked just like her brothers imagined pixies would look like. When they were married she was 5'8" and she weighed 108 pounds. Darn her anyway!!! (At least she was tall!)

Now that you have heard about me and some of my family's nicknames, I'd love to hear from some of you out there in Blogsphere to write me and tell me about your nicknames or those of your family and friends.

See you back in seven.

Love always, Darci and the ever mighty Skippy