Tony Deyal | What’s in a nickname – game, shame or fame?

‘Doodoo’, ‘Darling’, ‘Honey’ and ‘Love’ are nicknames, but they can also be the result of an old man who can’t remember his wife’s name and doesn’t want her to know. Or they can be a way of showing affection when you’re young. They called me ‘Bebop’ because I loved caps when ‘bebop’ cats had become the rage of the time and ‘Poet’ because, in my first night at university in Trinidad, one of my poems was on the government radio and I was caught listening to it and shouting, “That is mine!” So, I became ‘Poet’. For all of us, some of the nicknames can be really rough, tough and negative. Some of my schoolfriends from the old days still know me as ‘Cokes’, not because of my love for a particular soft drink but then, and even now, my two eyes don’t link. There are many of us, men and women, who were born with ‘cokey’ eyes and, once that is not sorted out before you are 10, it’s with you for life. I might have preferred being called ‘One-eyed Jacks’ because of the Marlon Brando movie but I learnt to live with ‘Cokes’ and, when it got out of hand, threatened to drop one of the bottles of the same name on their heads or call Brando to kill their “mother so-and-so”.

But, if you think ‘Cokes’ was bad, there are some that vary from funny to really sick. For example, and this is not too bad, “Why are hurricanes usually named after women?” Because, when they come, they are wild and wet but, when they leave, they take your house and your car. On the other hand, there is “What do you call a woman with a frog on her head?” Lilly. Men have it worse. “What do you call a man with no shin?” Neil. What do you call a man with no arms and no legs on your front door step? Matt. Or one hanging on a wall? Art. What if he’s under a pile of leaves? Russell. Suppose he falls overboard and can’t swim? Bob. Or a car falls on his head? Jack. If it is a spade on his head instead of a vehicle? Doug. The writer who has pencils for fingers? Mark. And finally, if a man who always has something on his shoulder is called ‘Chip’, what do you call a man with no shins? Tony!

OWN NICKNAMES

We in the Caribbean have our own nicknames. In Jamaica, dark-skinned people are ‘Blacks’ or ‘Blacka’; fat ones are ‘Fatta’, ‘Fatty’, ‘Bigga’ or ‘Bigs’; ‘Peas Head’ if you have a small, shell on top of a bigger body; and ‘Froggy’, which is as clear as ‘Indian/Coolie’ or ‘Chin’. However, ‘Bugsy’ and ‘Teetus’ are about buffed teeth and, very much on the downside, there is ‘One’ for the one hand, one foot or one eye, and ‘Cassie’ for people who, like me, have ‘crossed’ eyes. While ‘Ratty’ refers to someone who looks like a rat, ‘Scooby’ resembles the cartoon character, and ‘Foodie’ is a glutton. Interestingly, there are a lot of men called ‘Jubba’ but I’m yet to find out what it means. In Barbados, you will find ‘Short man’ and ‘Tall man’, ‘Red man’, ‘Fat man’ and even ‘Big man’ but instead of “hawling your ras”, ‘Ras’ is a Rastafarian or any man with dread locks. I like ‘Shotta’. It is a term of respieect for influential men, especially those who are successful with women. ‘Solj’ is short for soldier; ‘Dog’ is a partner in crime; ‘B’ is one of the brotherhood or a confidante; and ‘I’ is from ‘Iyah’ or what Rastas see as part of themselves. ‘Captain’ is someone in high position you don’t mess with, and, although ‘Daddy’ is what they call me in Barbados now because I am an old man, most people have forgotten that I was not just a ‘Top man’ but also a ‘Star boy’.

In Trinidad, I grew up with people like ‘Bread boy’ (because his father had a bakery), ‘Sose’, ‘Rabbit’ and even ‘Fecko’. I know about ‘Spanner’, ‘Torchlight’, ‘Tomahawk’, and even ‘Sugarhead’ (a name given to one of my school friends). There was a ‘Bigeye’ in almost every community and ‘Jimboots’ for boys whose fathers were not rich enough to give them shoes. There was also ‘Clock’ for any boy who had one arm longer than the other. A Trinidad writer, Janine Mendes-Francon, shared some “Ole shirt”; “Wine on meh nose, Not meh glasses”; someone who under the pain of methylated spirits ran screaming was ‘Triple’; and ‘Akanah’ for a Jamaican named ‘O’Connor’. Where I lived in Central Trinidad, we had someone with the same name, O’Connor, but we called him ‘Oh-canno’. There are two nicknames that only Trinis would think of - a man who had a piece of his colon surgically removed and he was nick-named ‘Semi-colon’, and the nickname bestowed upon a guy who jumped into a latrine pit to rescue an old woman from drowning. He was ‘Cacadiver’.

THOUGHT OF THE US

With cricket in India, and the World Cup coming soon in the US and Caribbean, I wanted to end with the cricketers. But then I thought of the US where a former president is going up against the present president. Worse, knowing that sports and politics don’t mix, I decided to go with what Senator Edward Kennedy said, “I don’t think you’re going to be a success in anything if you think about losing, whether it’s in sports or in politics.” In other words, the race is on.

Barack Obama was called ‘Barry Bomber’ for his scoring in basketball. MS Dhoni is ‘Captain Cool’ for his calm demeanour under pressure. George W. Bush was ‘Shrub’ from his schooldays, and Michael Holding is ‘Whispering Death’. In addition to ‘Honest Abe’ and ‘Uncle Abe’, Abraham Lincoln was ‘Grand Wrestler’, for his love of hand-to-hand fighting. In cricket, we have Stuart ‘Broad’, Joe ‘Root’ and Quintin de Kock. Grover Cleveland was ‘Uncle Jumbo’, Benjamin Harrison was ‘Grandfather’s Hat’, McKinley was ‘Wobbly Willie’, and the great Theodore Roosevelt was ‘Telescope Teddy’. My favourite cricketer, Jasprit Bumrah, for his unconventional bowling action, is ‘Boom Boom’. It was a name that the Pakistan captain, Shahid Afridi, also had. The Australian, Glenn McGrath, is ‘Pigeon’, Sachin Tendulkar was ‘Master Blaster’ and Rohit Sharma, ‘Hitman’. While Anil Kumble is ‘Jumbo’ and Sidhu is ‘Sherry’, my top-of-the line is Virat Kohli. He was named after a rabbit with big ears and called ‘Chiku’. Not bad. However, the politicians are the winners, not just with Bill Clinton’s ‘Slick Willie’, or Biden and his ‘Sleepy Joe’, but the Donald. He is ‘Mr Drumpf’, ‘Orange Man’, ‘President Snowflake’, ‘Don the Con’, ‘Mrs Putin’ and, my name for him, ‘TrumPEST’.

Tony Deyal was last seen taking in Stephen Colbert’s ‘The Last Show’ and, while he liked most of the names Colbert gave Trump, like ‘Tangerine Ball Bag’, ‘Marginally Sentient Spray Tan’, ‘Old Yeller’ and ‘Jackass O’Lantern’, his favourite was ‘Mar-a-Lardo’.”Send feedback to columns@gleanrjm.com