Despite my personal PR campaign to be called Wolf in the seventh grade—which included writing the nickname on all assignments and notebooks—my efforts were met with ridicule and realpolitik. “You don’t get to make up your own nickname,” my classmates said. “That’s not how nicknames work.” They assigned me less-flattering ones instead.
The episode became just another in a long list of childhood embarrassments. Every so often, though, I’ll hear “Wolf” called out in a crowded place like an airport, and I’ll turn and find my wife, sweetly righting a childhood wrong.
David “Wolf” Allan
Decatur, Georgia
“Boxcar Betty!” my uncle called from my grandparents’ pool while I roller-skated around it. “She’s the queeeeen of the roller derby!” he sang, echoing the Leon Russell song blasting from the speaker perched outside his room above the garage. From that day forward, I was Boxcar, or Box, to my uncles and my dad. My father never used my given name again.
I was seven, and it was 1972 in Northern California—the peak of the roller derby craze. The skates I’d wanted for Christmas were the white leather lace-ups worn by the “Blond Bomber” Joanie Weston and “Demon of the Derby” Ann Calvello. I’d seen them jam around the rink for the San Francisco Bay Bombers on KTVU.
What I’d gotten instead were Steven Super Skates, the metal-wheeled slip-ons worn by ten-year-old Jodie Foster in Kansas City Bomber, the derby movie starring Raquel Welch as her single mom, K.C. Bomber Carr. But I didn’t want to be a kid like Rita; I wanted to be K.C.—tough and sexy.
The women in my Italian-French family were magnetic, bossy, and smart, but I wanted to be more like the men. Being Boxcar made me feel I could handle any situation, scrape, or insult without whining about it—just like my dad (Ben the Rat) and uncles Jeffy (Wolf), Marc (Dr. Science), and Dan (Chief). They made adventures out of a drunken run to the county dump; drove, and sometimes crashed, their motorcycles and convertibles; and hunted deer, duck, and abalone, barbecuing their prizes on the grill by the pool. They drank Hamm’s and PBR during the day and red wine at night, telling stories of their capers around the fire pit.
In my teens, Boxcar presented her fake ID confidently at bars. She had her twenty-first-birthday party at the strip club owned by the Mitchell brothers, her dad’s famous pornographer friends. Boxcar went on to be a confident and cool foreign correspondent, interviewing Italian politicians, activists, and priests. She was sexy too.
As I matured, however, Boxcar started to hold me back. She was great at tough talk and city politics but clammed up when it came to deeper feelings. She was fine with love affairs but skeptical of committed relationships and trust. A couple of weeks before my wedding, she got drunk and kissed her editor in front of her husband-to-be.
I woke up on the bathroom floor the next morning, ready to stop letting Boxcar call the shots. I wanted to see who I was without her.
But Boxcar never fully went away. Nearly thirty years later she is my champion rather than my saboteur. When one of my kids was severely ill, she hip-whipped me forward so I didn’t stop trying to heal my child. She got me to shore when I became panic-stricken while open-water swimming. Even now, as I write, I can hear her yelling, “Go, Pia!”
Pia Hinckle
San Francisco, California
My first summer job was unloading trucks at the back entrance of the biggest toy store in London. Bill, the receiving manager, was my boss. When the HR person introduced me, Bill seemed to have difficulty pronouncing my name, Mukesh.
“What shall we call you, mate?” he asked.
I said he could call me Mac.
Relieved, Bill used my new one-syllable name while we unloaded trucks, and my “otherness” appeared to vanish.
After moving to California in the late 1980s, I worked in construction. Among the rough and tough workers on the jobsites, I became Mac again.
Today I’m retired, and only two colleagues I once worked with still call me Mac. The nickname made sense in a world where fitting in was important, but I’ve since renounced it. If people find my name difficult, I’ll help them pronounce it.
Mukesh Mehta
Del Mar, California
After being priced out of our Brooklyn apartment, my spouse Matthew and I wanted to try something different. We joked about moving to the Rockaways, a spit of land at the edge of New York City, with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and Jamaica Bay on the other. Then we dared ourselves to try it for a year.
Our first morning viewing Rockaway apartments was rough. The commute on the train had been brutal, and my nerves were frayed. One place smelled of cat urine. Another was too far from public transportation. Our realtor, as disenchanted with us as we were with her, dropped us off at a restaurant and wished us luck.
The bartender introduced himself as Jimmy and asked why we’d come to the Rockaways in winter. After we told him, he yelled to the kitchen, “Conrad, there’s a couple of baby butterflies out here I want you to meet!”
Baby butterflies? Were we about to be hazed?
When the live band took a break, Jimmy grabbed the microphone and announced, “Hey, Rockaway, we got a couple of baby butterflies thinking about moving here. Come make them feel welcome!”
And they did. A steady stream of people shared how dreamy the summers are, how special it is in winter, and of course there’s the ocean. Jimmy insisted we couldn’t leave until we agreed, definitively, to move there. His encouragement was exactly what I was looking for.
Goodbye, skyscrapers; hello, horseshoe crabs! We loved our first Rockaway apartment, vacating it only reluctantly three years later to take a backpacking trip around the world.
That trip was cut short by the COVID pandemic, which sent us back to New York without a place to live. We house-sat in Brooklyn, and I ordered caterpillars online, hoping the sight of them morphing into butterflies would distract me from my existential sadness.
Matthew texted his surf instructor, Mike, for leads on an apartment; it’s Rockaway tradition that any worthwhile rental information is conveyed by word of mouth. Mike said he had a buddy looking for renters.
The morning we planned to view the apartment, the caterpillars I’d bought emerged from their cocoons as butterflies. I hated to miss the first few hours of their explorations, but we had an appointment to see this place. Upon arrival, we discovered we knew the landlord: It was Jimmy the bartender.
We’ve lived there ever since.
Emily Welty
Rockaway Beach, New York
I was riding in the back of my uncle’s pickup across his cattle field when I fell out and landed on my head. My name is Claude, but from then on family and friends called me Squarehead.
In grade school I was picked on and given another nickname: Dirt Claude. I was small for my age and timid. My survival strategy was to run away, since no bully could catch me.
My running continued as I rose through the grades. Determined to show everyone there was something I could beat them at, I joined the track team and set school records at fifty and six hundred yards, but my form was awkward. My feet rolled outward, earning me the name Crazylegs.
For junior high PE our last names had to be stenciled on the back of our shorts. Mine, Neuenschwander, wouldn’t fit, however, and was shortened to N14—the number of letters in my name.
I became a top state contender, and N14 followed me through college competitions and beyond. I just missed qualifying for the US Olympic trials in the marathon at the age of twenty-five.
Injuries ended my running career, but years later I made a comeback worthy of a headline in the Mail Tribune sports page: “Old N14 Is Running Again.”
Claude Neuenschwander
Ridgefield, Washington
Fresh off the demise of a marriage that had involved no physical contact for several years, I embraced dating. I called it my Cougar Summer and had one-night stands with young men I affectionately remember as the Kickboxer, Loft Boy, the Firefighter, NFL, and Barely Legal.
The novelty of younger guys wore off, however, and I upgraded to more age-appropriate men, starting with five hours in a downtown hotel room with the sexually adventurous, long-haired Surfer Dude. Then came encounters with the Professor, West Point, and the Ice-Skating Pastor. I enjoyed a four-day, cross-country reunion with my ninth-grade boyfriend, River Raft Boy. Eventually I settled into a rotation of Convertible, the Beekeeper, the Actor, and Harmonica.
Then I met Racecar. He was as prolific a dater as I was, and gave his dates nicknames too. He was closest to Ginger, but there was also the Amazon (four inches taller than him), the Platinum Blonde, the Grad Student, and Resting Bitch Face. And who could forget Porn Star, who’d had a brief stint in adult films years earlier?
After several weeks of dating, I found out Racecar’s nickname for me was Nose Ring, a nod to the jewelry I’d worn for decades. (I was jealous when I found out Ginger had come up with a more interesting nickname for him than I had: She called him the Cajun Asian, in honor of his home state of Louisiana and his Chinese heritage.)
Neither Racecar nor I was looking for a relationship, but we’d go out once a week, compare notes, and laugh about our misadventures. Soon, however, he got under my skin. I’d be out with Harmonica or the Beekeeper and find myself wishing I was with Racecar. Turned out he was feeling the same.
We’ve been together nine years now and have no more need for nicknames.
Name Withheld
As a stutterer, I seldom talked to other kids and soon became an outcast. I smiled all the time to give the impression that nothing bothered me, but keeping my feelings inside came at a cost. Occasionally I’d get angry and unleash a rage more extreme than circumstances dictated, but the next day I’d be back to smiling. I got the nickname Smiley.
Decades later I went to prison. In my new environment I smiled to hide my fear. Once, a young man gave me a friendly slap on the back of my head, and I slammed him against the wall. He was half my age and could’ve whipped my ass in less than a minute, but on his face I saw pure fear. “You’re a crazy motherfucker!” he gasped, rushing off. I knew then I had to get help.
The prison offered an anger-management class. On my first day in the group, I noticed the other guys were all friends—odd in that prison compound of twelve hundred. “David, what’re you doing here?” a man named Lou asked. “You’re always so quiet.”
“Yeah,” I said, “well, so are you.” For the first time I wondered if being quiet was linked to anger issues in other men too. The rude men, the ones who cussed and insulted others, knew how to let off steam. We didn’t.
My anger-management meetings became my support group. One time, outside the group, I was arguing with another man and got so emotional my body was shaking. Lou walked up and patted me on the back. “Anger management, David! Anger management!” He and I laughed. I’m sure the other man wondered what the joke was.
Now out of prison, I still put on a smile with people I don’t know well, but with those I’m close to, I take the time to express my feelings.
David Wood
St. Petersburg, Florida
I grew up Becky Mullen, so my initials were B.M. That’s right: bowel movement. In elementary school I worried someone would notice and call me that. The longer I feared it happening, the worse I imagined the teasing would be.
One day in fourth-grade art class, I made a clay replica of my dog. I never thought of myself as artistic, but I really liked the final product. Admiring it made me feel larger inside. Then the art teacher asked us to bring our pieces to the front so she could carve our initials into the bottom with a toothpick. I grew increasingly nervous as dozens of kids clambered around her, shouting their initials.
As the art teacher took the clay dog from my hands, I blurted out, “R.S.M.,” for Rebecca Sue Mullen. I never went by Rebecca, and no one knew my middle name. The overwhelmed teacher heard only the first two initials, so she carved R.S. I didn’t attempt to correct her. I just wanted to get out of that circle of children.
Three weeks later, after our pieces had been fired, the art teacher read off the initials one by one, and each student walked to the front to collect their animal. I was sure that, once the others realized I wasn’t using my real initials, they’d say the correct letters aloud and realize: “Bowel movement!”
I steeled myself as the teacher picked up the dog and read the bottom. I’d forgotten that Rob Smith was also in my class. He’d been absent the day we’d made the clay sculptures, but when she said, “R.S.,” up he went. I was too terrified to explain what had happened.
In private I said to Rob, “You know you didn’t make that.”
“This is mine,” he replied.
Decades later, one of my kids came home holding back tears because of playground taunts. That’s when I told my entire family the story of my childhood fear and the lost clay dog. It was likely the first time my kids had imagined me as a fragile child instead of a confident adult.
When I was done, my carpenter husband chimed in with perfect timing, “On the jobsite, B.M. stands for butt mush.”
This cracked all of us up.
Rebecca Mullen
Mesa, Colorado
“What’s up, Doc?” Foreman Mark barked as I punched my timecard.
Little John, right behind me, asked, “Doc, you gonna load my truck this morning?”
Dust swirled across the lumberyard. A forklift backed up with a piercing beep beep beep. The circular and chop saws screamed. Customers were already lined up.
“You college kids don’t have no common sense,” said Little John, who was not little but enormous, with a belly that hung over his torn jeans. “How much is it costing you to go, Doc?”
It’s true I was the only college kid working at the yard, but I was going to Chico State—not exactly the Ivy League.
My lumber buddies also wrote “Doc” in the dust on my forklift, carved it with a pocketknife into my tape measure, and inked it on my belt—all to remind me not to think I was better than them.
At first I figured “Doc” referred to a PhD. But one day, when Little John and I were helping a woman load two-by-fours into her Subaru, she asked why he called me that.
“Because I’m in college?” I said.
Little John laughed. “Ever seen Bugs Bunny?” he asked her. “‘Doc’ means he ain’t too bright.”
One freezing morning I was cutting two-by-fours. The lumber had a thin layer of frost, and I was moving quickly through the stack when my gloved hand slipped and went into the saw. I froze. Mark saw me standing still. “All right, Doc, what’d you fuck up this time?”
I held up my hand, the glove soaked with blood. I was afraid to pull it off.
Mark sat me down on a load of lumber. “It’s OK, let’s take a look,” he said, gently sliding the glove off. Then he yelled for help. “Paul needs to go to the hospital!”
The president of the company, Rick, pulled up in his Range Rover, and the guys helped me into his front seat. Little John said, “You’re gonna be just fine, Paul.”
“You OK?” Rick asked as we pulled away.
“They called me Paul,” I said, incredulous.
Paul Eagle
Nevada City, California
The torture began on my first day of public high school. After six years at a Catholic school, I was happy to choose my own outfits and had selected a pink-plaid, knee-length skirt. To my chagrin, most of the girls in my homeroom sported low-cut, faded jeans. The few skirts I did see just barely covered the rump.
Things got worse in Algebra when the teacher called my name, Robin, during attendance, and a rowdy student screamed, “It’s Robin Redbreast!” I wanted to crawl under my desk.
He repeated it whenever he saw me—in the hallways, the cafeteria, the gym. Everyone within earshot turned to see this red-breasted person and saw only me, red-faced. Nothing about Catholic school—where breasts were the last thing anyone talked about—had prepared me for such an assault.
Years later, before our twentieth class reunion, I read the event booklet to catch up on my classmates. Oh, brother. There he was, now an upstanding citizen—a police officer, no less—active in the community, coaching kids’ sports.
I entered the swanky restaurant dressed in my best (short) dress and spotted my old tormentor in conversation across the room. I marched up to him. He knew exactly why.
As I launched into a tirade, he raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, Robin, I know. I’m sorry—really sorry! I am!”
We both stopped, looked at each other, and started laughing at the ridiculousness of high school, the craziness of life. I even gave him a hug. But it had felt good to finally see him with the red face.
Robin Bonner
Spring Mount, Pennsylvania
I matured more in my early years in the Air Force than I had in all my previous twenty-three trips around the sun, mostly thanks to combat experiences that were good, bad, funny, death-defying, and honorable.
Fighter and bomber pilots have a tradition of assigning nicknames to their fellow squadron members: pseudo-classified identifiers known as call signs. Upon mission completion and return to base, the commanding officer shouts each call sign. A loud “Here!” in response signifies the pilot is alive. If silence follows, the pilot hasn’t yet returned—and may not be returning at all.
A call sign can be inspired by a pilot’s legal name or something embarrassing or funny the pilot has done. The backstory is shared with the squadron, usually amid strong libations and some good-hearted teasing, the embarrassment washed away by laughter. He or she is now part of the family.
Leche, Buster, Bear, Tito, Limey, Reb, Sparky, Vader, ATV, G-Man, El Supremo, Hoss, Mulva, Zulu, Miles, Dozer, Dieter, Kracka, Big Daddy. These are just some of the call signs I learned in the Air Force. Miles was named after the time he missed his target by two miles during a training flight; luckily the only casualty was Miles’s feelings. ATV landed his training jet on the runway, lost control, and traversed the grassy area to the adjacent runway like an all-terrain vehicle. Leche was temporarily enamored with a lactating Mexican stripper. His mom knows his call sign, but she’s never heard the backstory.
Brian “G-Man” Golden
Washington, DC
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone, I lived with a host family from the Temne tribe. My host mother said I’d be called Alimatu, after her oldest daughter. Gone was Vikki. It felt strange to be called a name that wasn’t mine, and confusing in a house with two Alimatus.
After nine weeks of training I was posted a day’s drive away in a village called Talia, which was inhabited by members of the Mende tribe. When I introduced myself as Alimatu, people laughed politely at the idea of a white American with a Temne name. Most of the village called me Alimatu, but those I worked with in the clinic preferred to call me Vikki.
Alimatu felt like a borrowed identity until one of the women in the village decided to name her baby Vikki Alimatu, in honor of my work in the community. The gesture moved me deeply. I’d grown up as Little Vikki, to distinguish me from my neighbor Big Vickie. In Sierra Leone we called my namesake Small Vikki.
Nearly ten years later I receive reports that Small Vikki is thriving. I may never be called by my Temne name in the US, but in Sierra Leone my American name lives on.
Vikki O.
Annandale, New Jersey
My son, Brandon, was one of those snuggly, good-natured babies. Whenever he laughed, his dad, his teenage sister, and I stopped what we were doing to hover over him, charmed by this creature who brightened our lives. Brandon quickly recognized the cause and effect, and anytime he wanted more attention, he’d start laughing. It worked like a charm.
As he got a little older, his ears were too large for his face, and he always wore a goofy, lopsided smile. For some reason I started calling him Pal, and the name stuck.
When Brandon started high school, I suspected the nickname would embarrass him in front of his friends, so I tried to break the habit, but without luck. When he entered college, I made another attempt and had some success, but I continued using the nickname when he, his sister, and his nephews were together.
During Brandon’s sophomore year I asked him to help me out for the weekend. His dad and I had divorced a couple of years earlier, and I was living in a downtown loft and hosting a party. I needed someone to serve as a doorman and serve drinks. True to his amiable nature, Brandon didn’t hesitate.
The party was a success. After the last of my guests departed, I was rinsing dishes in the sink when Brandon asked, “You’re seeing Bill, aren’t you?”
It was true. I’d been dating one of the men at the party for several months. “How’d you know?” I asked.
“Mom, he called me Pal.”
Linda Allison
The Woodlands, Texas
There’s a good reason for the anonymous part of Alcoholics Anonymous: When the organization was founded, alcoholism wasn’t recognized as a disease, and the condition was kept secret. Through the years, those of us who attended regular meetings needed a way to distinguish people beyond just first names. Thus came the nicknames, which might be based on clothing (Sweatshirt Jerry), a profession (Radio Tom), what part of the country the person came from (Boston Helen), or a recognizable feature (Wheelchair Chris).
I was Nice Judy—a namby-pamby sobriquet for a professional woman, but better than Crazy Judy—which was already taken by the other Judy in the group. There must’ve been something between “crazy” and “nice” that would have fit me, but Nice Judy stuck.
Traveling solo around Europe many years later, I attended a meeting with a man nicknamed Stick Dick—I never learned the reason for that one—and reminisced about the names from my early days. As I continued to traipse around European cities with my single suitcase and no agenda, I thought maybe I could become Mysterious Judy. Or Writer Judy. I was an aspiring writer and hoped to earn that name before I got to be Old Judy, and then Dead Judy.
Anonymous Judy
My whole life my mother called me not by my given name, Lalaie, but by Lali.
“Lali, come eat.”
“Lali, bring your book.”
Even when she was irritated, it was still “Lali, enough,” though always with a softness.
Lali was just who I was, the word from my mother’s lips a part of the background noise of our house, along with the whistle of the pressure cooker and the murmur of Indian serials on TV in another room. Lali belonged to the smell of cumin in hot oil, the clink of chipped glass cups from Honest Ed’s.
When my mother died, the name started to fade. Distant relatives would still call me Lali, but I lived in California and barely heard from them. Lali drifted away, and I became Lalaie again, or some version of it: Lalee. Layla. Lara.
Grief doesn’t make an appointment. It just shows up while you’re doing the dishes. Almost a year later I was living alone in London, in a cold, damp flat where nothing dried properly. I was reading a story about immigrant moms and their kids. One mom in the story kept calling her daughter Lali. Why is she calling her that? I wondered. Her daughter’s name wasn’t even close to mine. So I googled “Lali: meaning in Hindi” and “Lali: meaning in Punjabi.”
There it was: Darling. Beloved. I stared at the screen, read it again. It felt like someone had knocked the air out of me, like my mom’s voice had crackled through the static.
Lalaie Ameeriar
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
In fifth grade I was given a nickname that caught on like wildfire. Soon everyone at school called me Dog. I was taunted, shunned, barked at. Some kids tried to trip me in the hallways. Others spat at me as I walked home from school.
It was a bad time in other ways too. My dad had recently died. My oldest sister had been killed. My family life wasn’t all that great. That name hung around my neck like a yoke—or a collar.
Years later at a New Agey support group, we picked spirit-animal cards from a divination deck and practiced intuitive reading skills on each other. My partner picked the dog card for me. This will be interesting, I thought. She said dogs are kind, loyal, and devoted. They give unconditional love and offer forgiveness, even after much abuse. She told me I was capable of offering all these things to others.
Sarah Rohrs
Salem, Oregon
Shortly after I arrived in prison, a younger man and I got confused for father and son, and he began good-naturedly calling me Senior, while I referred to him as Junior.
We formed a unique bond and shared stories about our “outside” families. I got to hear about some of the struggles his mother had survived and how they’d inspired him, which reignited the ember of humanity in me—all too easily extinguished in a place such as this.
During this dark chapter of my life, that undeserved nickname has provided an anchor that keeps me from going adrift.
Christopher Stechman
Coralville, Iowa
My second husband, Michael, called me Punkin, which made me cringe. I’m not a Punkin. But my first husband hadn’t called me anything, which was pretty much how that marriage went, so I was happy to have this intimacy between us.
I was thirty-nine when we married, and right after our honeymoon I turned up pregnant. Michael called the baby-to-come Gourd, which was kitschy but made me hug my belly and smile.
When I miscarried Gourd at twelve weeks, my husband held me and wept, saying, “I’m sorry, Punkin,” over and over, as if it were he who’d lost Gourd, and not me, not my body. I wished then that we’d never given him a name. It made it so much harder.
For the next twenty-five years, whenever Michael walked in the door after work, he called, “Hey, Punkin!” He phoned me every day during lunch and asked, “How’s it going, Punkin?” Before we went to sleep at night, he curled his body around mine and whispered, “Good night, Punkin.”
Eventually I quit cringing at the name, even when he used it in front of others. It’s who I was in his eyes. It made me feel treasured.
A year ago he was walking across an intersection and got run over by a passenger van. He fought to survive for five months, having suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, skull fractures, and a broken back.
A couple of days before he died, he suddenly became coherent. From his hospice bed, he raised his arms to me and hugged me so tight that my feet lifted off the floor.
“Michael,” I said, laughing, “you have to let me go. We’re setting off the bed alarm.”
“I love you, Punkin,” he said. “I’ll never let you go.”
But then he did.
Scattered throughout my home are small glass and ceramic pumpkins. Before he died, I couldn’t have told you why I collected and displayed them. I honestly never saw the connection to the nickname he’d given me. Now that he’s gone, though, I see it. Every time I look at one, I hear Michael’s voice.
Kathie Giorgio
Waukesha, Wisconsin
There were four of us kids, all adopted. My two brothers and older sister were blond and skinny, but I was dark-haired and chubby. Prone to melancholy and stomachaches, I grew up feeling like the odd one out. Maybe that’s why my dad had a special name for me. He called me Becky-Boo. It felt like a warm hug—a reminder that he “got” me.
His job as a traveling salesman kept him away from home for a week or two at a time. We were all a little down when Dad was gone, but I missed him terribly. Mom was a cheerful, efficient homemaker with strict routines. Dad was more playful. When he came home, we’d all lighten up again.
Dad was jolly and generous, with a full head of white hair and a sparkle in his eyes that suggested he had some secret to tell. His round belly made him look a bit like Santa Claus, but the goatee and bolo tie were closer to Colonel Sanders. He loved to explore different cuisines as a cook, and I would wake up late on a Saturday to the sound of him singing in the kitchen. He’d make up words as he went, announcing my entrance with “Becky-Boo, I love you. Oh, Becky-Boo, I do.”
After I went away to college, Dad sent me a blanket showing several rows of white sheep and a lone black one in the middle: his way of saying he knew how it felt to be me, and that I’d always be loved.
Rebecca Zimman Fairfax,
California
Several months into our relationship, my boyfriend began calling me Skillet. I pictured the heavy, cast-iron implement on our stove: indestructible, practical, built to withstand extreme heat. Nothing soft about it—just pure function.
Though not flattered, I let it go for weeks. Finally I asked him why he called me that, hoping he would say because skillets were hot, and so was I.
“You have a stomach of steel,” he said.
This was true. I poured so much habanero sauce on everything I ate, he would sweat just watching me.
He called me Skillet for about eight years. It became more endearing, the way nicknames often do, but I never truly liked it. I longed to be called Baby, Gorgeous, Sexy, Hot Stuff, Lover—something that makes a woman feel desired.
That relationship has long ended. I’m now fifty-two. Menopause came quietly—one month I bled, the next I didn’t—and along with my periods went that longing to be desired by a man. I think back on those eight years I spent with that boyfriend and want to shake my younger self. Why did I stay with someone who named me for my digestive capabilities? I think about all those names I’ll never be called and lament the years I spent being admired only for what I could endure.
Tamara MC
Arizona
After a waitress at the Bamboo Hut stomped out during the lunch rush, I told Bill, the bartender, I could help him out.
“Are you twenty-one?” he asked.
Only nineteen, I answered, “I have an ID that says I am.”
“Get that group that just walked in,” he said.
After the lunch rush, Bill stubbed out a cigarette and handed me cash from the till.
I loved that job. For six months I’d start at 11:30 am and work until the rush ended, and I always made good tips. A Benjamin Moore plant was around the block, amid various factories and warehouses. Often the only woman in the place, I responded to “Babe.” (It wasn’t a politically correct time.)
The Bamboo Hut had a pool table where a hustler sometimes lost to me in his first game, then ran the table after a patron stood up and put money on the side. I flirted and accepted the drinks men bought me, even if I took only a sip. I figured it helped Bill’s business.
Because nobody knew me in that part of town, I wasn’t the college girl. I was just Babe. “How does it feel to be the dumb blonde?” a customer asked me once.
No one had ever called me that before. “It feels great!” I said.
I went on to have lots of other jobs, some of which I’ve nearly forgotten, but I remember that one with a smile.
Sharon Johnson
Portland, Oregon
My wife, Meryl, calls anything she finds cute “Kitty.” This can include our dog, a squirrel, or, once, a particularly nice loaf of bread I’d made. “What a gorgeous Kitty!” she exclaimed as she petted it.
She once called my eighteen-month-old grandson, asleep in his high chair with cookie crumbs dusting his hair, Vacuum Cleaner.
My last name is Wolff, and when we first began dating, she called me Wolffy, which evoked memories of high school locker rooms. Each time she used it, I waited for the whipped towel. Though we were still in that early, accommodating phase of the relationship, I put a stop to it.
She has, however, consistently gotten away with calling me Freddy, a name I hadn’t heard since I was about eight years old. Other names she has for me are “Scat Rat,” “Fine Animal,” “Mr. Mouse,” and the especially manly “Cute Kitty Mouse.” Once, Meryl asked me, “What do you like about being a Mr. Mouse?” She was especially delighted when I answered, deadpan: “It’s a toss-up between scurrying in the walls and gnawing on the electrical wires of our cars.”
A pure example of something from nothing, this abundance of tender, untethered, ever-mutating nicknames began with Meryl. Her parents never invented any nicknames for her, unless, between the beatings, you count the curses.
I’m not the only recipient. Her son Josh is “Joshie Boy” or “Joshie the Boy” or simply “Boy.” After he earned his PhD, he became “Dr. Joshie the Boy.” Her niece Amelia is “Baby Amers” or just “Amers.”
Recently Meryl and Amelia were discussing dogs. Neither could remember the breed they both coveted, the Weimaraner. The closest they came was Weemeranian. They became so enamored of this distortion that it devolved into the diminutive form Weems. They then began using this name for each other. I am not included in this—an unexpected mercy.
This nicknaming is now being passed down to the next generation like a trunk of tangled costume jewelry. Meryl’s granddaughter Willa, four years old, objected to being called Willa Beaner Baby. Asked for an alternative, she proposed Big Kiddo Goose. Impressive.
Fred Wolff
Cumberland, Maine
Growing up in the sixties and seventies, I had no problem going by Becky. I moved in a pack of bubbly girls with equally bubbly nicknames. We feathered our hair, wore buffalo sandals, and dabbed our pulse points with musk oil.
By the time I turned eighteen, however, “Becky” had grown irritating. Whenever I introduced myself, people thought I was saying “Peggy” or “Betsy.” I wanted to break away from cute nicknames. I wasn’t the least bit bubbly. I was a serious person who longed to be taken seriously. As I packed up my VW bug for the thirty-mile trek to college, I vowed to leave Becky behind, but when I arrived at my dorm, the name had beaten me there, emblazoned on the door sign.
Over the years I tried many times to go by Rebecca, but it never stuck. I’d accidentally sign “Becky” on gift cards and name tags. Old friends would insist, “You just look like a Becky!” A doctor looked up from my chart and said, “You go by Becky.” It sounded like an order. I gave up.
When I turned fifty, I decided to try again. Asking old friends and family members to grant me an extra syllable of their time felt like playing dress-up. One friend asked if Rebecca was my midlife crisis name. She meant it as a joke, but it didn’t feel like one.
When I was a child, my family had called me Rebecca only if I got uppity or refused to share. In their eyes, Rebecca was my obnoxious, imperious alter ego. My dark side. Becky was agreeable. Rebecca was trouble. But I saw it differently. Becky didn’t have to be banished for Rebecca to emerge. Becky was a part of Rebecca. The center, in fact.
When I finally admitted how hard it was for me to ask people to call me Rebecca, everyone seemed eager to help. They’d gently slip my name into conversation: Yes, Rebecca. Me too, Rebecca. See you soon, Rebecca.
One day I answered a phone call from an old friend. “Rebecca?” she said.
I started to say, Hell, call me Becky. But I didn’t, and I knew she wouldn’t even if I had. I’d made her promise.
“Rebecca?” she said again.
The sound of my name struck me as clear as a meditation chime. “Hello!” I said, greeting us both.
Rebecca Lanning
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
