Words and Stuff Johnny Grimond
A friend of mine, with a perfectly normal name, is widely known as Font, a reference to Canon Fontwater, a character in Osbert Lancaster’s cartoons to whom he supposedly once bore some obscure resemblance. Friends and relations of someone else I see a good deal of call him Toad, a name acquired nearly 70 years ago when he took a liking to Toad of Toad Hall and his fast red car. Everyone knows of Aggers and Dickie Bird and Posh Spice. Clearly, nicknames abound. But even so, are they, I wonder, in decline?
Their heyday may have been the early years of the 20th century. That, at least, is the impression I get from reading my grandmother’s diaries. Take her brothers for a start. Anthony was called Puffin or Puff. Arthur was Oc, Cyril was Cys, and Herbert was Beb. She married Maurice, known as Bongy. ‘Bongy was there!’ she wrote after a ball in Oxford in 1905. ‘Dear Bongy. I have a passion for him, & Gibbie & Gugs…’ Others in the pages that follow include Bluey, Waxworks, The Master, The Professor, Doddie, Sligger, Warty, Bim, Bobbety and Toto.
If you think you’ve stumbled into the Drones Club or Blandings Castle, you’re not far wrong. Plum Wodehouse didn’t need much imagination to come up with Gussie Fink-nottle, Catsmeat PotterPirbright, Stilton Cheesewright, Pongo Twistleton and the rest. Wodehouse’s world was his own, and the nicknames of my grandmother’s circle may have been equally unrepresentative of society as a whole. But in one respect I suspect it wasn’t: nicknames were mostly for men. Stiffy (short for Stephanie) Byng, who married the Rev Harold ‘Stinker’ Pinker, was something of a rara avis.
It’s no surprise that nicknamed women are sparse among the monarchs of history. Women turn up occasionally as ‘Good Queen Bess’ (Elizabeth I of England) or ‘the Wench of Queluz’ (Carlota Joaquina, Queen of Portugal), but are far outnumbered by Ethelred the Unready, Henry the Navigator, Wenceslaus the One-eyed and so on. Norse rulers were given particularly fine nicknames. Their courts were packed with figures such as Ragnar HairyBreeks, Olafir Thick-legged and Eric the Lisp and the Lame. Even Damon Runyon’s creations – Harry the Horse, Sam the Gonoph (pickpocket) and so on – seem bland by comparison. I seldom hear of such formulations nowadays, though Phil ‘the Collector’ Swern still provides the material for Sounds of the Sixties on Radio 2.
Pop musicians have sometimes borne good nicknames – Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry and Elvis the Pelvis, aka the King – but not nearly as often as blues players. Many of these have been blind, hence Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Mctell and Blind Boy Fuller. Other attributes provided nicknames for Big Bill Broonzy, Big Mama Thornton, Howlin’ Wolf and Lightnin’ Hopkins, who got his to match that of piano player Wilson ‘Thunder’ Smith. T-bone Walker did not look like a steak, but had Thibeaux as a Christian name. A booming voice gave H-bomb Ferguson his nickname.
Jazz is even more fertile, though also dominated by men. It has its own royal family, with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, King Oliver and other monarchs. Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines was christened Earl, Fatha being added later to mark his paternity of the piano. Cannonball Adderley’s name started out as Cannibal and was then corrupted. Performance antics earned Dizzy Gillespie his name. Louis Armstrong got ‘Satchmo’ from his ‘satchel mouth’. Charlie Parker got ‘Bird’ from his liking for chicken.
Most jazz nicknames are descriptive: Fats (Waller), Chubby (Jackson), ‘Bags’ (under the eyes of Milt Jackson). And most jazz men have nicknames, like greatness, thrust upon them. But Jelly Roll Morton chose his two forenames himself: they were New Orleans slang for female genitalia, of which he was fond.
It may be no bad thing if some nicknames are in decline.