Not the obvious ones, like everyone knows someone called Wayne Bruce who picked up the nickname "Manbat." Rather, who do you know with a nickname earned for utterly random reasons?
Eg,
I worked with a guy once who was known as Briefcase. The reason being, he turned up at work one time carrying a briefcase. About 20 years ago.
At high school, a lad earned the nickname Gandhi. Because thanks to a particularly vindictive PE teacher he pissed his shorts during a PE lesson. Gandhi wore a big nappy, y'see. Kids are bastards.
What've you got?
We had a girl at work who was known as 'Bond Girl' until she left. Only because when she first started someone misheard her described as a blonde girl.
A mate of mine is known by everyone as Ken. His real name is Andy but he bought an old vintage Triumph Bonneville, years ago, the same as the one Ken Boon rode in the old series ‘Boon’. I’m sure people who’ve known him for years don’t know his name is Andy. His mum is literally the only person who doesn’t call him Ken
Sqidgey Matt, due to a misinterpretation of a request for some sort of bouldering-mat device for use when climbing a bridge.
.
Reading Pete, who lives in Banbury.
Cardiff Steve, who lives in Penarth
Scottish James, who lives in Terrerife
.
I'm known as Crasher. Sat in a cafe one day with a chap I'd been riding with for about three years and he just said, out of the blue, 'what is your real name Crash?' I suspect that he is far from the only one not to know this
We had a bloke called Nogger, we were supposed to be getting someone called Wood but that was changed at the last minute. We’d chosen the name so had to use it. We had a froggy- slightly protruding eyes, Dobbin / -teeth, Bart, Sluggy, Ed (Scarffe), Reg (like on Corry) etc, etc
One of the operators at work calls his mate Sugar Tits, because he strongly believes it's a nickname that should be employed at site but it's obvious inappropriate to give it to any of our female colleagues.
My old boss was called 'big show' (not to his face).
As he was quite overbearing and had a passing resemblance to the wrestler of the same name..
Bloke I played cricket with was so slow (running) - in the field, between the wickets, so he was nicknamed Arkle.
Not anyone I know IRL, but QPR's ex player Fitz Hall - One Size.
And an account manager called 'action man' because he had the physique and posture of a generic plastic male doll, complete with fuzzy generic haircut.
I christened a South African ex-Para workmate Little Zola because he liked cross country running.
A colleague was called 'something' Nobbs. In the pub, he and his Mrs were known as 'Nobbs & Knockers'...
When I was following the Fields Of The Nephilim we knew a girl who worked in a library and was a bit burly so we called her “Hilda The Builder”.
At one particular gig we hooked up with some locals and were working which mutual friends we had from seeing the band. We mentioned Hilda ,described her and immediately they said “oh you mean Conan The Librarian”
Still laugh when I think about it 36 years later.
Rather, who do you know with a nickname earned for utterly random reasons?
At uni my brother was called ‘The Goat’, his housemate had a nickname ‘chops’ and my bro used to offer food with a ‘do you want one chops?’, at the time Paulo Wonchope was a Man City forward, his strike partner was Shaun ‘The Goat’ Goater.
I’ve been known as Razor since school, the WWF wrestler I was allocated as my character was ‘Razor’ Ramone and it just stuck, even my schoolmates kids call me it these days.
I’ve been called Binners by everyone since I was at school. I’m 54. My sister used to call me bin lid because it rhymed with our kid, then everyone started using it. That was then appropriated to Binners (after a brief dalliance with Bin Laden, pre 9/11) and that’s what I’ve been known as ever since. My nieces call me uncle Bin Lid
This thread has definitely been done before...but anyway.
First night at uni we were asking each others nicknames and one lass said she was called Vacant at school (she looked it). It was misheard by everyone as Bacon and that's what she's been called ever since.
Mate from school had an older brother who had a snail farm briefly. So all the kids called him Snail. That got changed to Snez at some point.
I heard this once on TV so not sure how true but the rugby player Billie Twelvetrees was called 36 by his Irish coach because, um well, in an Irish accent twelve t(h)rees are thirty six
He was widely known as 36.
The Scots rugby fans that inhabit another corner of the internet have all sorts of nicknames for the team some of which have ended up in the wider media
Finn Russell is "Dancer"
Blair Kinghorn is King Blairhorn
Bennett is "the messiah"
Jones and Tuipulotu are collectivly known Huipulotu
Tuipulotu Junior is "wee Shona"
Z Fagerson is Ragnor
Darcy Graham is "adhd kid"
Dobie is " the house elf"
etc etc
My English teacher Mr Richardson was called Peanuts for absolutely no reason anyone could tell.
The nickname eventually fell into disuse until about 15/20 years later when all the offspring of ex-pupils started going to the school and having him as their teacher. He was apparently gutted it had made a comeback...
This thread has definitely been done before…but anyway.
Nicknames has certainly been done at least once before. I was specifically leaning into nicknames for bonkers random reasons, like I have a friend known as "Projectile Dave" after a particularly impressive beer fuelled sicky-uppy event about 30 years ago.
John Eales the rugby player was known as "nobody" - because nobody is perfect
All Daves seem to have prefixes. My mate Cowboy Dave was christened that just because it’s a Happy Mondays song and he’s very Manc. The Dave bit then got omitted completely and he just became known by everyone as ‘Cowboy’
I’ve got another mate called Ambrose who I went to uni with. Her names actually Wendy, but Wendy rhymes with Mendy, and Ambrose Mendy was a boxing promoter who was around at the time, hence Ambrose. The name stuck and is still her nickname 30 years later
Oh, sure. We have "Dave" and "No, The Other Dave."
It's an affliction for Mikes also. We number them, "is MP2 coming out tonight?"
This is where working in mills, as a labourer and other lifting heavy stuff jobs pays off.
Wolfie - A man who fell off a ladder suffering a spinal injury. The result was he had a slight hunch, his hands hung funny and swayed a bit and he had an odd walk Somebody commented that he looked like the wolf man
Diesel - Never found out why.
Piltdown - A man who had a Neanderthal look to him. A kind lady from the HR department pulled a few of us in and asked Andy (Piltdown) if he'd like to raise a grievance. He stood up, used his massive hands and his freakishly long arms to present himself and said "looks at me love, they've got a good point"
Greenpeace - a massive guy who once laid down on a trolley and two blokes threw water over him and started pulling the trolley whilst yelling about getting the whale back in the ocean.
I originally joined here as TandemJeremy. Some folk ( as often happens here) shortened it to TJ or ~Teej. Nothing particularly unusual in that - until my nephews and their pals somehow picked up on it and now they all call me TJ. they have never been on this site!
Dog Otter, because he looked like a cross between a Dog and an Otter..
Bash - because he looked like one of the Bash Street kids.
One ball - because....
Radar - looked like Radar from MASH
Worked with a girl years ago known as BJ across the whole site. She was quite popular come to think of it 😉
Theres a guy who owns a nearby pub, now called 'Pidder' by everyone who knows him. His real name is Stu(art) and at one time he knocked about with another Stu. So they were known as Stu-pid and Stu-pidder at that stage. Then the first one moved away.
First week of uni in 1999, 6 complete strangers thrown together in a halls of residence flat. Completely average height John C (surname not actually important) gets calls "Big John Stubbs, middle name Muggs" after a Wu Tang lyric. It sticks and 4 years later as part of the student committee Freshers who have never met him before are calling him Stubbsie. I'm assuming he shook the name off when out in the working world but I like to think it's still in it there.
I have a good friend called 'Crazy Emma'.
She's lovely, but if you put a bottle of red or two infront of her, you'd understand!
I have a good friend called ‘Crazy Emma’.
She’s lovely, but if you put a bottle of red or two infront of her, you’d understand!
I’ve a mate called ‘Crazy Dave’. He’s a retired headmaster and the least crazy person you’ll ever meet. His real name is George. I can’t even remember why we started calling him Crazy Dave, but it’s stuck.
My mate was called Isaiah at school
He's got a slightly wonky face so one eye is higher than the other. I never noticed it until he started wearing glasses. Teenagers are often cruel and sometimes funny.
I was beetroot head cos of my permanent large rosey cheeks
A friend of a friend is referred to by everyone as Planet Head. He’s quite full of himself, to say the least, and is blissfully unaware this is what he’s known as.
An old work colleague used to randomly refer to other colleagues directly and indirectly by one nickname or various nicknames from a collection including...
Moocow
Schnorbitz
Sausages
Brains
Muscles
Batman
Very random!
Hah.. I've a colleague we ironically call 'Brain trust'....to his face...
As he has a habbit of talking with 200% confidence on subjects he clearly has zero % understanding of.
He doesn't seem to mind at all, I think the joke is lost on him and he takes it as a compliment.
I worked with a guy called Red. Everyone wore blue boilersuits but his got splashed with oil one time and he wore a spare red boilersuit that he had in his car for one day. He was mocked mercilessly for owning a red boilersuit (obviously a sign of sexual deviance, right) and was known as Red ever after.
I worked with a guy called Red. Everyone wore blue boilersuits but his got splashed with oil one time and he wore a spare red boilersuit that he had in his car for one day. He was mocked mercilessly for owning a red boilersuit (obviously a sign of sexual deviance, right) and was known as Red ever after.
That's brilliant and not too offensive - I approve of this, hahah!
This may have come up before, I have a vague recollection of it, but anyway; when I was at school I had a real love of cars, and around that time Dunlop introduced a new type of performance-oriented tyre called the D70. It had a particular feature in that when uninflated the tread was concave, so that when properly inflated the tread surface was flat, and it was given the name ‘Groundhog’, and there were promotional stickers given away, some of which found their way onto things like my school satchel, etc.
Inevitably I got the nickname Groundhog, but fifty-odd years on, there’s only one person in the world who actually remembers and on the very, very rare occasion I bump into her she always calls me by that name. We were an item for a while, and it makes me smile that she still does. Bless her. 🙂
One of the university cricket teams had someone who was know as Churner, he wasn’t the greatest fielder and It was short for Chernobyl as in slow reactor…..
Mark Waugh the Aussie cricketer and brother of great Steve, whilst still an excellent player was known as Afghanistan, the forgotten war…..
Calling Sanny to the forum...
We had an English teacher who had a very lightweight and wispy comb-over and a bouncing gait, as he walked, it floated up and down like a pan boiling over...we called him Lid. But also Bod - of the BBC children's educational cartoon, but for no good reason I can think of. A whole class was detained once for whistling the tune as he approached them.
Ex Military, so some proper nicknames, but here are some of the tamer ones.
Various- someone asked him if he had any nicknames and said yeah, various.
Huggy - the guy had a really really hairy chest.
Trout- he liked dodgy women.
Baldrick - was as dim as the original.
RLF - (Really long face) because he had a really long face.
Gimlet - he was a small boring tool.
We had a supply teacher Mrs Lingard. If you said it quickly you could get away with Mrs Shinguard.
And Mr Heddle was always Miss Treddle.
I heard a good one on the rest is football podcast. Apparently Gazza used to call Justin Edinburgh, Dalmahoy, because it’s just in Edinburgh
1990, university halls of residence, the payphone rings and I answer it. Remember those days? One payphone for the whole floor, all 26 people, you;d have to wait to make your call home then wait for parents to call back so they were paying instead of you using your phone card - and woe betide any random who happened to phone while you were waiting for a call back, as they may have found themselves unexpectedly disconnected. But I digress. The phone rang, no one was waiting for a cll, so I answered it.
"Can I speak to Steven please?"
"errr, we don't have anyone called Steven on our floor"
"<sigh>. Can I speak to Chip please"
"Oh right I'll just get him"
... some time later...
"Why did that person call you Steven?"
"Well that's my name"
Turns out his surname was Minton, so at some point in his school life Steve Minton was rechristened Chippy Minton after the carpenter in Trumpton and the nickname "Chip" stuck to the extent that's how he introduced himself
Sometime later in Uni, I was given the nickname "Judge" on moving into my fourth year house
The residents, in no particular order were:
"Judge" Jules after a popular DJ of the time
"Jonah" - granted in first year when they failed to get to several events he'd suggested due to weather, traffic, police shutting down raves and general bad luck
"Bean" - cos he had a head shaped like bean, a head shaped like a bean (often sung to him, can't recall what the tune is called offhand but it's heard on the football terraces)
"Shev" - as he bore a passing resemblance to Eduard Shevardnadze
"Hedley" becuase in contrast to Bean, his head seemd like someone had painted a caricature head and he was wearing it as a caricature mask
One of my road riding mates can’t ride at a constant pace (massive crime in a road group) always off the back or surging off the front.
Hence known at Sergio.
Ha, we have a yo-yo in our club for the same reason.
couple of childhood friends.
One called Keith, nickname Beef - no idea why.
Another called Jaime and his nickname was duggen. That came from... Jaime - Jimmy - Hacksaw Jim Duggen - Duggen.
Thought of a few more!
Apple Head - Because he had an indentation in his head that made it look like an apple. Even his mum called him it.
Mad Eye Massey - A gentleman with the surname of Massey and a lazy eye.
Zippy - a guy with a bald head and big scar on it that looked like a zip.
we call our (male) dog Amy cos he's a 'whine-arse'
When I was in the uni hockey team you had a nickname assigned in the pub after your first training session, and it was derived via word association from your surname.
One that sticks out was a pair of twins who's surname was Sortwell - Sortwell -> sorted, and as they were twins, say hello to E's and Whizz. Never did know which one was which.
There was also a fella who's nickname came out as Semtex, followed by a hurried discussion/concern as to it's appropriateness given he was from Belfast. He was asked whether he minded and was very happy with it
The best was the rugby team who, being the sophisticates that university rugby teams are known to be, had given a player the nickname C**tbutter. When another guy joined a couple of years later who had a remarkable resemblance to Mr Butter, he was brilliantly given the nickname I Can't Believe It's Not C**tbutter
A work colleague got a workmate a deal on some DIY materials. It was discovered that while it was a good price he had also taken a small cut for himself. He was known forever after as the weasel.
Others were the mantis and slime. I never knew them before they already had these names and no idea how they got them.
Loads at work, it was almost compulsory to have a nickname. Mine was Badger, after PC Badger from the Noddy stories
Tulip was our Inspector. It stood for "Totally Useless Little Irish Person"
Crutch was so called after someone saw him in the shower and reported that he was hung like a draught-excluder
Squirrel was always busy
Tiddles was nicknamed after the station cat (never goes out)
Nigel the Nightcrawler gave all the women on the team the creeps, and was eventually sacked for sexual misconduct
Bungalow Bill was n't the sharpest knife in the drawer....(nothing going on upstairs)
Exocet wasn't very popular. Excocet because you could see him coming and there wasn't much you could do about it.
Fatal Phil . I thought it was because he went to fatal accidents, but apparently it was because after five minutes in his company you'd start to contemplate suicide.
We had a Semtex, but I can't remember why
Dibble, after the cop in TopCat
Postman Pat. A resolute bachelor whose sole aim in life was to empty his sack
Terry ****. Real name was Terry, named after the Viz Character
the list is endless
As we've drifted into non-spurious nicknames; I used to play football with a lad who was apparently not too selective in the nightclub (a bit like Postman Pat above, there was one aim and he was remarkably efficient at achieving it)
Nicknamed Gravy, because gravy goes with almost anything.
Ewen McGregors brother is an RAF pilot and his call sign is Obi 2
Small riding group with a Mint theme.
One of the riders used to turn up late (not on purpose, I might add).
We called her After8.
One of the grumpy riders is called Humbug.
I’ve had a couple spurious (well to me at least) nicknames.
Main one was TT (or Mr TT). My weight used to yo-yo a bit and on the way up a mate commented (at the gym) on my developing belly “**** me <my surname>, you’ll need two towels to dry that!’ and so that was it. Oh, for about a decade.
After falling off a climbing wall (and breaking my arm badly) I was called Cliff (or sometimes, Cliff the fall guy)…
And CP. as in short for Car Park as I fell off my bike in a motel car park in Utah and dislocated a finger. And for years if I ever started to talk about mountain biking I’d get interrupted and asked “did you make it out the car park this time CP?).
Friends, who needs em, eh?
All Daves seem to have prefixes.
I have three near neighbours all called Dave.
They are CatManDave (cos he owns about 6 cats), Dog Dave (to distinguish him from CatMan) and Drummer Dave for the mundane but logical reason that he's a drummer.
My wife's family call me Pants because in my mid 20s I went round for dinner to one of my wife's brothers wearing shorts on a hot day in the middle of summer.
Yer
as above
know a crazy dan
in his college years was in fairly known local band... now it appears he makes a living by doing freeride jetski... so i guess the name is still appropriate
I have a good friend called ‘Crazy Emma’.
Isn't "Emma" the forerunner to what is now Louise on the forum? I've only known one and it was commonplace to hear her name and "box of frogs" in the same sentence.
As he has a habbit of talking with 200% confidence on subjects he clearly has zero % understanding of.
I used to work with one of those. He worked his way into a very senior position and was widely regarded as the oracle on everything, simply by lying with extreme confidence.
Gimlet – he was a small boring tool.
That's phenomenal. 😀
Heard my son referring to his pal as VAR earlier today while playing his Xbox. Asked him why - apparently his pal has such a square head that they’ve named him thus - after the sign the football refs do for a VAR decision. It’s equally genius/cruel - kids eh!
I Can’t Believe It’s Not C**tbutter
I've just laughed far too loud in a public place.
Daves seem fair game. Was in a riding group with a Dave C and a Dave B. Then Dave H joined, but someone misheard his name and kept calling him Bob. 20 years later he is still DaveBob.
In the early days of our cycle club a local legend was so hungry at the cafe stop he had two cakes. I suspect his club membership card still has his name as Gordon Two Cakes.
We had a badger at work, or just badge for short. He changed jobs and the cruel ex employees phoned him up at the new place, asked to speak to badge, sorry xxxx. It's followed him around ever since.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not C**tbutter
It's not spurious, but I have a bald rotund friend who earned the nickname "I can't believe he's not Buddha."
I've definitely mentioned these on here before, but...
I used to work with a regrettable lady, who was nicknamed Vimto by her colleagues, "Coz naebody likes Vimto".
My dad used to be a draughtsman back in the days of the pre-CAD drawing office, which featured big, angled drawing boards that came up to chest-height. One famously workshy colleague used to arrive late every day, but attempt to throw everyone off the scent by taking his jacket off before entering the office and pretending he'd been in all along. He'd casually saunter in, trailing his jacket along the floor behind him, banking on the aforementioned drawing boards to hide it from view.
They called him The Matador.
The best was the rugby team who, being the sophisticates that university rugby teams are known to be, had given a player the nickname C**tbutter. When another guy joined a couple of years later who had a remarkable resemblance to Mr Butter, he was brilliantly given the nickname I Can’t Believe It’s Not C**tbutter
Where you at sheffield Uni in the 90s IHN? I have a vague memory of being introduced to someone with that unfortunate nickname in the broomhill tavern....
I used to do a lot of Dragonboat racing and invariably with a large team some names develop, some arrive with them when they join. There was Moo, which was a derivative of Amanda. yes really - as a kid she sometimes called Mandy or Mandy Moo and the Moo bit stuck. One guy was so far out there I started calling him Cosmic and that stuck to the point where some folk only knew him as that.
My sister has a friend called Kade. Not his real name, apparently at university he was hopeless at cooking so was called Kitchen Disaster which got abbreviate to KD. If you say K D as one word you get Kade.
And I have a friend called Fishy or Mr Fish - He was one on many Pauls and we had to differentiate so he got that as he kept Koi carp.
And many years ago in the scouts we had Porky - so called as he could stutter a bit and end up with a bit of a screwed up red face as he tried to get the words out - we thought he looked like Porky Pig from the cartoons. Probably not the done thing these days!
I’m still introduced by cycling friends to some people as Biketart which was my original Singletrack forum name (before the big hacking crash)
A friend's mum started work in a factory. She worked alongside a lad named Warren.
Months later she had cause to email him, but couldn't find him in the staff directory. So she went to see him. "My name's not Warren" he explained," it's Paul."
"So why do they call you Warren, then?" she asked.
"It's short for 'warren ugly bastard'"
At school we had a science teacher named Keith Burton. Being 11-15 years olds we simply transposed the first letter of his first and last names.
And at work - we had a guy who was known as "The Hula Hoop Thief". He had 6 fingers - or rather, an additional thumb on his thumb. At a Christmas event someone was handing around a bowl of said crisps, he rummaged around in the bowl and emerged with one too many.
Oh,
I christened an unpleasant woman I worked with "Slinky" and it stuck. She quite liked it, she thought it was because she slinked about in her heavy make-up and fluttery eyelashes and pencil miniskirts. Truth was, I thought it'd be fun to push her down the stairs.
Must be about 10 years ago now, we got a new full-time driver. Early 60's, last job before retirement. Short, half-blind, and a bit "special" shall we say...
Within a few days the warehouse manager, who's office he shared started calling him Thrush. Within a couple of weeks, everyone in the company was calling him that. By 3 months his email addy had become thrush@ and for the next 5 of so years, that what he was known as across our bit of the industry. "Oh - you sending Thrush round to collect? What time?"
Fats forward to his retirement do. Staff churn had meant a lot of colleagues never even knew him as anything else. We're all stood around in the boardroom with glasses of cheap bubbly, speeches made, presents presented. Finally after thanking us all for the great time he had, he asks "just one last thing - I'd really like to know why you started calling me Thrush...?"
The warehouse manager sits there with a big sh!teating grin on his face.
"cuz you're an irritating c**t..."
One of the contract painters at work was called banksy, he asked if it was a reflection of his work to be told 'no it's because I have never seen you painting anything'