Where have all the nicknames gone?

A puzzle for the ages—or for Cheech, PJ, Sully, Topher, and Squeebo.s

I have always liked nicknames, because they indicate intimacy. The silly, nonsensical names parents call their babies facilitate bonding, and as children grow, we still express warmth by calling them Timmy rather than Timothy or even Tim, or Suzie rather than just Susan.

Ever after, to be on nickname-terms with someone implies a family-like bond—even when the name walks the line between demeaning and affectionate, as with the nicknames that John Belushi’s Bluto bestows on new frat pledges in the movie Animal House. Is it flattering to be known as Weasel? Mothball? Well, sort of, maybe, in a way—actually, yes! These are names that can be worn with pride. Not unlike being a large guy called Tiny or a bald guy known as Curly.

When we use nicknames with people we don’t know—calling Eisenhower “Ike,” for example—it imports a fondness or intimacy to the relationship, as if they are part of the family. Boys, in particular, get nicknames from their teammates, their roommates, their fraternity brothers, their co-workers. They are a common aspect of close-knit, bonding culture: You can expect a nickname in a military unit, for example. Nicknames are, by default, affirming. For a nickname to be negative, it has to be explicitly so, designed to counter our positive expectations of nicknames: Tricky Dick Nixon, for instance.

I am thus concerned about the disappearance of nicknames. As my five children have grown up—they span from age 6 to 18—I have noticed with regret that not one of them has been given a nickname. And they aren’t some sort of weird outliers: None of their friends have nicknames, either. Varsity jackets that, 30 years ago, would have been emblazoned with bespoke names indicating affection and belonging—Spike, Junior, Scooter, Cheech, Rocky, whatever—now have proper, unshortened Christian names: William, James, Kristen.

You barely even get the old-fashioned usage of initials. I went to school with TJ Woodward and PJ Lewis—where are the TJs and PJs now? Anecdotal evidence for the disappearance of nicknames is all around us. Just think about politicians: “LBJ” was the last real presidential nickname. Yes, I know that Reagan was allegedly “Dutch,” but that always seemed like wishful thinking—he was never Dutch the way that Ike was Ike.

But there’s more than anecdotal evidence. Using Google’s Ngram tool, we can track the usage of old-fashioned nicknames in books over the years. Nicknames like Bobby, Tommy and Jimmy peaked around the end of World War II, then fell off a cliff. The 1960s and ’70s were terrible for old-fashioned nicknames. There was something of a rebound in the new century, but now the usages are declining again. I can say, looking around the playground, that there are quite a few Williams but not a single one is Billy (though a couple of them get called Will).

Obviously, the state of nicknaming is nobody’s number-one concern—including onomasticians, people who study naming, almost none of whom specializes in the study of nicknames. Searching the scholarly databases for research on nicknames, you’ll find some interest in non-Anglophone cultures—like the 2022 study “‘You call your teacher zombi?’: Nicknaming of Tanzanian secondary school teachers”—but relatively little about the U.S.

Still, it’s worth exploring possible connections between the fall of American nicknaming and a host of other negative trends.

I think that our increased political polarization makes political nicknames less likely. Eisenhower could be Ike to both his supporters and his opponents; same with JFK and LBJ. Today, while one could imagine a Trump nickname (or an Obama nickname), it’s hard to imagine a neutral one. The best we could hope for would be something mildly derisive, akin to the old Tricky Dick.

The only exception I can think of is AOC. I have no theory on how she pulled it off, being AOC to friends and foes alike. It’s a remarkable, and unusual, bit of political branding.

Beyond actual politics, there is the politicization of campuses and the workplace. Nicknames often take a bit of license and are usually bestowed without permission. Today, calling someone Tiny or Curly, whatever their size or hairstyle, could be interpreted as bullying. To call a student from El Paso “Tex” might be seen as an attack on his heritage or at the very least a form of aggressive pigeonholing.

My wife was known, back in college, as Crazy Legs—a name bestowed by a guy who also christened his roommate Smiles. Did these names draw unwanted attention to her body and the roommate’s face? Today, someone would surely think they did.

And then there is the general pressure of the meritocracy. I went to high school and college, respectively, with two people called Topher: one was a boy named Christopher, the other (bear with me) a girl named Christina. It was fun calling them Topher; having people around with whimsical nicknames was fun in general. (I was Oppy.)

But now that high-schoolers have LinkedIn profiles and college students want to found startups before they graduate, it must be harder to keep that sense of whimsy. There is pressure to seem like a grown-up, a particular kind of self-serious grown-up. On networking sites, on social media, in the preprofessional internships that every college freshman is obsessed with, it’s harder to stay Topher, Trip, Zander or PJ.

Things could change, of course. For all we know, we are less than four years away from a presidential election featuring AOC squaring off against JD. These are not my preferred candidates, but I dig their names.

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This piece originally appeared April 18, 2025, in The Wall Street Journal. Have a nickname story for me? Put it in the comments or write to me at mark.e.oppenheimer@gmail.com.

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