People are sharing stories of rubbish nicknames after Jim Felton said this – 21 favourites
It began when comedy writer and author Jim Felton went on Twitter to ask people to share the rubbish nicknames they gave people to distinguish someone from another person with the same name.
What’s the worst descriptor you’ve heard added to someone’s name to distinguish them from someone with the same name? In school had a Ben, a Big Ben and a Paedo Ben. He wasn’t a paedo, we just found out he attended scouts.
— James Felton (@JimMFelton) October 18, 2020
And it prompted lots and lots of responses. Here are our favourites …
1.
I used to work at a bar, and among the customers were ‘Dan the Cocktail Man’, ‘Dan the Safeway Man’ and ‘Dan the Other Dan’.
— E Wilford (@ebwilford) October 18, 2020
2.
Two Tim Williams, best friends. We called one of them Rib because he was slightly thinner than the other one. He became a doctor so we called him Dr Tim. But then the other one also became a doctor so he went back to being called Rib.
— Andy Ryan (@ItsAndyRyan) October 18, 2020
3.
There were two Dans in my year and one of them was very popular and the other one, I found out, was known as ‘Shit Dan’.
— Mark Watson, always banging on about this novel (@watsoncomedian) October 18, 2020
4.
We had Big Chris and Little Chris, but then Little Chris left to be replaced by a much bigger Chris. But Big Chris, now the smaller of the two Chrises retained the honourific, which added significant confusion to operations.
— Anonymous Barry (@barrybehaved) October 18, 2020
5.
There was a girl from Neath who joined our sixth form in Barry who we called Welsh Tracey. There were no other Traceys (it was mostly a boys’ school) and we were all Welsh. She just had a Welsher accent.
— Simon Price (@simon_price01) October 18, 2020
6.
Not a distinguisher necessarily but there was a guy at school known as “staker” which I thought meant he was a bad boy stabber or something. In fact it was “steaker” in reference to the kidney he had to have removed as a child as in “steak and kidney pie”
— The Earl of Leuven (@EarlofLeuven) October 18, 2020
7.
I once knew two families both with the surname Bell. One family went to church and the other, were a little rough round the edges. One family were church Bells the other Hells Bells
— kathy. (@skybluebint) October 18, 2020
8.
Welsh village
Dai the butcher, a butcher
Dai the plumber, a plumber
Dai the death, an undertaker— Colin Macphee (@ColinMacphee1) October 18, 2020
9.
My son has several friends and a brother called Jamie. We distinguish them by changing the J for the first letter of the surname – hence Samie, Famie and Namie. Brother Lamie isn’t keen on the labelling.
— Nom de Plume (@pen_ame) October 18, 2020
10.
Two Daves at uni, obviously big Dave and little Dave. Then a third turned up and unfortunately got called Cardboard Box
— Andy is not afraid of the dark Clark (@AndyCRuns) October 18, 2020