What's in a name?

I have always found Jamaica to be quite special--I will resist the impossible, "relatively unique"--in its love of nicknames. I will start with my self. I have a Christian name--baptized by, officially entitled by, but never used for much of my early life. However, one grandmother wanted me to be named Ricardo, and when that wish was not respected, my nickname was born. So, when I was a boy in Jamaica, I grew up with one name, "Rickey" or "Mas' Rick", and that was the name that everybody used, even my teachers at school. It was only when I went to England and had to enrol in school there that I made the startling discovery that my name was not my name! I then had to get used to hearing and respond to "Dennis". "Is who dat?" would go through my head and I would wander around as this name was called at register time and had to be poked to respond. Of course, over time, people who got to know me at school and at work used my legal name. But not within my family, and not by anyone associated with my family, to this day. Even the later additions to the family, and friends of family in Jamaica, who never knew me till I was grown up call me "cousin Rickey" or "uncle Rickey" or "brodda Rickey".

Jamaicans love nicknames, even for the high, mighty or not. We love familiarity, so PM's have been universally called by their first name, or its diminutive: "Eddie" or "Michael" or "P.J."; former PM, Portia Simpson-Miller is affectionately known as "Sista P". We should perhaps tear a page out of history and call some of the politicians by nicknames once associated with monarchs or other rulers, like "the Accursed" [Genghis Khan], the "Do-Nothing" [France's Louis V], or the "Dung-Named" [Constantive V] (see link).

But the man or woman in the street likes a nickname that is expressive. When you hear the names of some of the DJs or those who are in the public eye, you can see clearly that they are their name: "Yellow Man" (albino), "Pele" (football skills like the Brazilian great), etc. For others, there is also a clear history for their soubriquets, take DJs such as "Elephant Man" (born O'Neil Bryan, but his overly large ears as a child earned him the nickname "Dumbo Elephant" from his classmates) or "Lady Saw" (who apparently took the name of Jamaican DJ, Tenor Saw, whose style she is said to emulate). Others take on stage names to same them from ridicule, I'm sure, in the heady world of Jamaica's dance halls, such as "Dillinger" (born Lester Bullocks) or "Yabby You" (born Vivian Jackson). A so-called don of Tivoli, one of Kingston's crime-ridden inner city areas, Michael Coke, is reportedly nicknamed "the president".

I don't know if it's out of respect or ignorance, but we tend to not give nicknames to things we really revere. So, Jamaican coffee will not be referred to as "Java"; at most it might carry the generic name for the superior quality bean, "Blue Mountain", even if it hails from other regions of the country. We don't mind giving nicknames to places: the National Stadium is known as "The Office" (it used to be taken for granted that Jamaica's footballers would not be beaten there, so just "another day at...").

The nickname, which is more than just a corruption of the given name, is very much a part of the living person, as is clear for some of the DJs. So, if you leave home in the countryside and go to university don't be surprised to be referred to as "College bway" for the rest of your adult life. My father is now endearingly called "English"; he returned to Jamaica from the UK twenty years ago, but he lived in England 30 years. Makes sense. The other returnees from England who are his neighbours have to find their own nicknames. For a long time, I used to be called "Mister Buck" because as a child, my head would buck up and down as I got tired, and insisted that I was not ready for bed. So, people can know a good deal about a part of you from these handles.

As someone wrote on a Jamaican culture website, Jamaica is "where everybody haffi av a nickname, like "Scully", "Smiley" and "Ragga"... and where every reggae song haffi rhyme fi soun good."