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The Power Of Nicknames

When I was a kid, my friend Kyle’s dad anointed me with a nickname: “Clintster”.

I hated the name generally, but somehow it felt okay coming from him. It’s like he was telling me, “You’re okay, kid. You and me? We’re mates.”

Of course, when Kyle called me Clintster, I told him to fuck off.

Turns out, both reactions are pretty normal. Dr Michael Adams, a professor of English at Indiana University, says nicknames hold a hidden power. They can make you feel good or bad, depending on who’s using them and in what context. When Kyle’s father called me Clintster, it made me feel closer to him. When Kyle used the name, though, somehow I had the feeling he was making fun of me.

But if nicknaming worked for Kyle’s old man, can it work for me years later? If I use some salutatory shorthand on everyone I know, maybe it’ll boost my status at work or let me bond more with friends. To find out, I decide to give new names to at least 20 people over the course of a week. After all, there is no way I’ll be insensitive enough to make the same mistake Kyle did.

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Most nicknames seem pretty obvious, so I decide to stick to the basics. The guy who brought in a Darth Vader mask to decorate his office? He becomes Darth. Except he looks confused when I call him that. I get a vibe like, All right, what are you trying to pull?

When I notice that a guy sporting yellow trousers has referred to himself as “Colonel Mustard” on Facebook, I get unreasonably excited. “Colonel Mustard!” I shout when I pop by his office. He, too, ignores me. But wait: didn’t we create that one together?

Time to check in with Adams: “When you give nicknames to people, you assume a sort of authority,” he says. In formal settings, like the workplace, that can come off as a small but significant linguistic power grab, which co-workers might not appreciate. “You already have this structure around you that’s telling you who's important, who’s not, and why.”

In other words, the corporate world is a dark, feudal empire. My best attempts at camaraderie seem to be screwing up that rigid hierarchy, so I decide to focus outside of work. The guy at the cafe who makes my lunch salad every day already calls me Chief. Surely we’ll end up becoming fast friends if I nickname him back. “Hey, Chief,” the man says. “How are you, Boss?” I counter loudly.

Uh-oh. Boss looks sort of hurt. Not only that, but the next day he pretends to be too busy for pleasantries. Maybe I’ve lost Chief status.

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Adams, too, is disappointed in me: anthropologically speaking, assigning nicknames on a one-to-one basis has connotations of brotherhood or equality. By accepting being called Chief, I’d tacitly given my salad guy the upper hand. That changed when I imposed an equally generic surname. Now I was subtly hazing him.

My breakthrough comes in far less complex social environments. A mate who overpacks for the beach becomes “Mule”. And then there’s Marley, after Bob Marley because he likes to smoke – wait, never mind. He likes it. Adams says that’s because nothing is at stake; we’re social equals. These in-jokes bring us closer. Let’s just say they’ve earned the right to call me Clintster.

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