I прикладные аспекты иностранных языков

Names and nicknames of places and things in the aspect of culture-oriented linguistics

Speaking about nicknames a definition of this term should be given first. Nickname – a familiar, invented given name for a person or thing used instead of the actual name of the person or thing; – a kind of byname that describes a person by a characteristic of that person.²

In Middle English it was still written as “an eke name,” later “a neke name” in which eke meant, simply, “also.” The term fails to comment on either the extent of usage a name enjoys, or the underlying attitude that caused it to come into being.

The nicknames take a really important part of everyday life of society. The vast majority of nicknames are known and used in highly restricted contexts³. Pupils at most schools, for instance, can refer to classmates and teachers among themselves by using nicknames that would be meaningless to an outsider. Any social group that meets regularly may have its own internal naming system; indeed, knowledge of that system may become a sign of inclusion in the group, a kind of verbal member-ship badge. Nicknames, along with certain slang expressions, often help to create a private language that excludes strangers.

The most extreme example of such a private language is that used between lovers. The partners are likely to have nicknames for each other that are uttered only in moments of intimacy, and that otherwise remain a closely guarded secret. In recent years we have been able to get some hints as to the form these nicknames take from the Valentine’s Day messages published in various newspapers. On February 14, 1979, for instance, the British newspaper The Guardian carried announcements to the effect that Crunchy Body loved Smokey Bear, Wimbo loved Widget, and so forth. Several hundred such coded nicknames, or love names, appeared on the same page, all of them testifying to the importance of a shared language as an indication of a special relationship.

What is also revealed by the nicknaming that occurs between lovers is an insistence that possession carries with it the right to bestow a name. At this level, naming is a God-like act, demonstrating dominance over the person being named. As the social group widens, so the significance of a nickname and the reason for it become less intense. The nickname may merely be a shared joke, or a reflection of what H.L. Mencken once called “linguistic exuberance, an excess of word-making energy.” As it happens, Mencken was referring to slang, not nicknames, but by the time we come to expressions like Big Apple for New York City, or Blue Flu, for the police strike that occurred there in 1960, we are in any case on the borderline between slang and nicknames. “Slangnames” would be a highly appropriate description of such terms.

1.2 Subdivisions of nicknames

There is certainly a need to break up the general concept of “nickname” into various subdivisions. Nicknames can be:

• 
  friendly⁴;
  
• 
  hostile;
  
• 
  neutral.
  

There also exists a special kind of nickname that is a genuinely needed substitute name. This is because the real name of the person concerned is unknown. A typical example occurs when a criminal’s deeds attract the attention of the public although his identity remains hidden. Some criminals, like London’s Jack the Ripper, retain the nickname as their only certain identification. Others may later be known by their real names, yet the nickname may well remain better known. There are many people, for instance, to whom the name Albert DeSalvo would mean nothing, though they would know of his activities as The Boston Strangler.

When Elvis Presley became The Pelvis, the nickname was apt in a highly individual way, blending elements of his real name in a way that drew attention to a characteristic bodily movement. Also the nickname can be a very best kind of verbal caricature. Such a name almost justifies the comment made by a nineteenth century writer, Harry Long, that a nickname is “a biography crowded into a word.” But countless nicknames are far less personal, being inherited by certain categories of people. A man with red hair automatically becomes Red; someone from Indiana is a Hoosier; someone who is bald – by the common process of naming after opposites – is Curly. The passing on of these traditional nicknames – “inseparables” as Eric Partridge called them – is clearly not a recognition of uniqueness, but the conferring of such names is usually a friendly act, a sign of social acceptance.

For some kinds of people it is very important to have nicknames, for example, politicians.

That fact is generally recognized, of course, and people such as politicians who depend on public support often encourage the media to use nicknames when referring to them, always provided that those nicknames are friendly or flattering. The wrong nickname could easily ruin a public reputation, just as it can cause great problems in private life.

Those interested in such aspects of the subject could usefully turn to Nicknames: Their Origins and Social Consequences (1979), by Morgan, O`Neill and Harre. The message relayed by all such psychological and sociological studies is fairly consistent – that nicknames given with friendly intentions, even when they appear to be unflattering in themselves, show that the person concerned is thoroughly in harmony with the social group. Acceptance of a nickname by an individual shows personal stability and adjustment. In that respect, nicknames are no different from more formal personal names, since psychiatrists have long interpreted a patient’s dislike of his own name as a distinct danger signal.