What’s In a Name?

Name: Margaret Marian Rossman

Aliases: Mags, The Maglet, Tooth, Toothie, Marge, Cookie, Magledon, Magster, Maggie May, Ocelot, Magoo, Lucas, Magdog, Quiz, MMR, mmrface, Magli, and simply, Maggie.

I’ve been called, and answered to, every name on that list, and I’m sure a few more. (There’s an easy formula—start with Mag and add anything to the end.) This doesn’t even include the long list of names I could have been called if you follow the listings of alternate forms for Margaret in any baby book. Feel free to call me Gretel, Greta, Gretchen, Rita, Margie, Margery, Madge, Peg, Peggy, Pog, Maisie, Meg, Mog, and Daisy. Well, maybe not Pog—I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

The nickname and I have a very close, and often bizarre, relationship. I began to dread the appearance of substitute teachers in elementary school who, taking attendance, would utter “Margaret” as my classmates giggled and I gently corrected with “Maggie.” From the day I was born I had two identities. I was a double namesake, taking on both my grandmother’s names to keep things equal and I was proud of this—but “Margaret Marian” made me feel a bit like an old lady.

I am often asked if I plan on going by Margaret at some point—a coming-of-age ritual, perhaps. Though the concept isn’t completely foreign, as my newspaper byline shows, it seems far too strange to lose my identity. My sister on the other hand, loves using name changes as a piercing/tattooing substitute. In middle school, my sister rebelled, and realizing that she couldn’t get her name legally changed (to a rotating group of names, at least one I remembered being “Felicity”) she would just go and change the spelling. So “Katie” became “Caitie” a reflection of her given name, “Caitlin.” Then recently, “Caitie” became “Cayte” which can be pronounced like Kate or when she’s in a particular mood, Cai-ette. (Cai rhyming with guy.)

For someone who takes my name identity so seriously, you would think I’d have a problem with the multiple personalities forced on me by everyone I know. Instead, I’ve kind of embraced the random callings. And they are random. I’m sure you’re thinking “Man, I would like to know the stories behind some of those”? Well, I can tell you…no, you really don’t. Most of them don’t make any sense. People will decide completely on a whim to call me something—it’s just feels appropriate. “Tooth” has absolutely nothing to do with my teeth, or with anything else for that matter, though being my sport’s nickname from high school—and the sport’s nickname is the ultimate sign of acceptance—I embraced it so hard that I actually got a vanity license plate. I’m pretty sure many of the people we passed on the street thought there was a dentist in the car.

However, I am not just a nicknamed, I am a nicknamer. My father instilled in all his children an inability to function in casual conversation without the help of nicknames. This is the same man who deemed us Lucas One, Two, and Three (a hierarchy of order) and still can’t really justify why he did it. He has a nickname for every cousin and continues to nickname all the people I meet at college. Of course, these names are never used when directly speaking to my friends (though the cousins are subjected to the nicknaminess) but if I mention someone by their proper name, it is quickly repeated back in proper nickname form.

So the youngest cousins get the extra nickname treatment from me Ollie (already short for Oliver) becomes “Ollie, ollie, oxenfree” and “Ellie” (already short for Elizabeth) becomes “Elle s’appelle”—a nickname I still have trouble explaining to her. My blockmates all have nicknames for each other, so often my work is done for me. And I also become an anti-nicknamer, with a tendency to call boys by their full first names rather than the shortened form they go by. In deference to the teacher of this skill, I rarely greet my father with any normal form of “Dad.” Instead it’s “Papa Bear” or “Mr. Man.”

Even with all this training, I sometimes wonder why it’s impossible for me to stop. Being a constant nicknamers puts me up in the same league as George W. Bush (though I tend to go a little beyond the preschool mentality of “Turd Blossom” or “Pootie-poot”). Nicknaming is often looked down upon because it is always a power struggle. Even when done with affection, the nicknamer is saying that their choice for your name is better than the one you already have. Of course, it gets complicated because in most cases the name you already have wasn’t your choice either. Further, so many people use nicknaming for evil, and not for good, the ultimate form of playground teasing, it’s easy to see why the nicknamed might get disgruntled.

But if a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, why do we care? Apparently our identities lie inside, not by the name itself. To an extent, it’s true. We often hope that children with truly unfortunate names will turn out cool to make the name have less of an impact. Though naming also ties us to the identities of other—if you once knew someone named “Bob” and you hated him, it’s going to be hard to warm up to any “Bobs” in the future.

Yet the point often missed when thinking about nicknames is it’s not the power or the control involved, but the connection. The nickname outwardly shows how a person defines you. A lot of my nicknames are ridiculous, but the essence always corresponds to the relationship I’ve had with the nicknamer. Even if the nickname is something you’re not very fond of, you learn a lot when figuring out why someone would give you that name. Nicknames are the ultimate window to how you are perceived by others.

Nicknames also define the spheres of your life. My boyfriend goes by “Steve,” “Stephen,” or his last name “Stromberg” depending on who you’re asking. This, of course, leads to a whole new set of difficulties when friends cross the boundaries of these group lines. Calling your boyfriend “Stromberg” to his parents probably isn’t going to cut it, and using the term with his friends from home is probably going to leave them more than a bit confused. Not to mention that if your family only knows him by his last name, introductions are kind of awkward.

Maybe what I really like about the nicknaming is it gives me a chance to have all those identities, even if I don’t want to define these identities myself. I like to think that having a multitude of nicknames just means you have more personalities to cover—though it probably also means your given name paves the way for these types of description. I’ve always loved word and the nickname is the perfect dissection of why words are used. You’ve got to be creative, because it’s the easiest way to let people know you care.

When my sister and I discuss the possibility of children names, we always include, “but you could call them ‘blank.’” The nickname is built into our lives—we just figure it should be built into the lives of others.