Michael's essay — Why don't people have nicknames anymore?

Kevin Gallant retired this past spring after more than 30 years working for the CBC in Charlottetown.

I would wager that few outside his immediate family and close friends know him as Kevin. But I guarantee that everybody in Atlantic Canada knows Boomer Gallant, weather person extraordinaire.

Boomer. The perfect nickname for an outsized personality.

But it is a rarity. Nicknames are disappearing. Or are now limited to baseball players and Mafia made guys.

Where I grew up almost everyone had a nickname. One of my best friends on my block on Maplewood Avenue was a kid named Butch, called Butchie. As in "Hey Butchieeeeeee." How he got the name I'll never know.

There was also a neighbourhood kid nicknamed Pills, because he had some kind of asthma problem and was always taking medication.

Nicknames seemed to abound throughout high school years. 

There was an overly rotund football centre named Fats. Another fat kid was Slim. There was Red, Curly, Ace, Shorty, Chipper and, of course, Four-Eyes for those of us condemned to eye-glass purgatory.

The father of a friend of mine was called Dusty because he apparently fell into a sack of flour. On my block he would have been Whitey.

Later I came to know a Popeye, long before the character of Jimmy Doyle in The French Connection.

Here at CBC Radio there was a sound engineer about six and a half feet tall we called Stretch.

There were sports nicknames such as Pee Wee or Duke or Babe but most sports figures had titles instead of nicknames — The Fordham Flash, The Splendid Splinter, The Iron Horse.

I once had a girlfriend who gave my first car, a Ford Fairlane, a nickname -- which I have sadly forgotten.

Boxing always provided some colourful names; Two-ton Tony Galento or Sugar Ray Robinson.

I've always loved Mafia nicknames. My favourite was the wise guy nicknamed Eight O'Clock, as in, "If anybody asks for me, I was here 'til eight o'clock."

Until I skimmed some research sites, I didn't realize that nicknames are traditionally a male bonding thing.

From the Middle English, the term is "eke name" — it means extra name or a substitute for a given name.

There are various categories: group nicknames which set apart an all-male group or tribe; referential nicknames for public figures; private nicknames usually between lovers or married couples.

For example, Clementine Churchill's name for Winston was Pug. His name for her was Kat.

Nicknames are attached to the view many men have of themselves — something, I guess, like a tattoo.

This is especially true of men in groups — gangs, military units, baseball teams. Men want their group to be tightly knit, better than other tribal units. Special nicknames add to the aura of specialness and exclusivity.

Modern nicknames have found a home on the internet and in video games.

Names such as Papa Smurf, Psycho Thinker and Sexual Chocolate give the games player status. But you have to be careful. A good nickname apparently raises status, a bad one makes you a laughing stock.

The traditional guy nicknames are archival now. They belong to another era, another time in our lives when everything was new and everybody was young.

I refuse to move on. I'll stick with Butch and Skinny and Red, and take great ongoing delight in hearing about a retired weatherman perfectly named Boomer.