NICKNAMES.
The word “nick” in nickname is cognate with the German word
_necken_, to mock, to quiz, and the English word “nag,” to tease,
or provoke.--W. L. BLACKLEY, _Word-Gossip_.
A good name will wear out, a bad one may be turned: a nickname
lasts forever.--ZIMMERMAN.
J’ai été toujours étonné que les Familles qui portent un Nom
odieux ou ridicule, ne le quitteut pas.--BAYLE.
Among the books that need to be written, one of the most
instructive would be a treatise on the history and influence of
nicknames. Philosophers who study the great events in the world’s
history, are too apt, in their eagerness to discover adequate
causes, to overlook the apparently trifling means by which mankind
are influenced. They are eloquent enough upon the dawning of a
new idea in the world, when its effects are set forth in all the
pomp of elaborate histories and disquisitions; but they would do
a greater service by showing how and when, by being condensed
into a pithy word or phrase, it wins the acceptance of mankind.
The influence of songs upon a people in times of excitement and
revolution is familiar to all. “When the French mob began to sing
the Marseillaise, they had evidently caught the spirit of the
revolution; and what a song is to a political essay, a nickname is
to a song.” In itself such a means of influence may seem trivial;
and yet history shows that it is no easy thing to estimate the
force of these ingenious appellations.
The name of a man is not a mere label, which may be detached, as
one detaches a label from a piece of lifeless furniture. As Goethe
once feelingly said, it is not like a cloak, which only hangs about
a man, and at which one may at any rate be allowed to pull and
twitch; but it is a close-fitting garment, which has grown over
and over him, like his skin, and which one cannot scrape and flay
without injuring himself. Names not only represent certain facts
or thoughts, but they powerfully mould the facts and thoughts
which they represent. Men have borne names which they have felt
to be stigmas, an active cause of discouragement and failure to
their dying day; and they have borne names, inherited from their
ancestors, which have lifted them above themselves, by bringing
them into fellowship with a past of high effort or generous
sacrifice.
In politics, it has long been observed that no orator can compare
for a moment in effect with him who can give apt and telling
nicknames. Brevity is the soul of wit, and of all eloquence a
nickname is the most concise and irresistible. It is a terse,
pointed, short-hand mode of reasoning, condensing a volume of
meaning into an epithet, and is especially popular in these days
of steam and electric telegraphs, because it saves the trouble of
thinking. There is a deep instinct in man which prompts him, when
engaged in any controversy, whether of tongue or pen, to assume to
himself some honorable name which begs the whole matter in dispute,
and at the same time to fasten on his adversary a name which shall
render him ridiculous, odious, or contemptible. By facts and logic
you may command the assent of the few; but by nicknames you may
enlist the passions of the million on your side. Who can doubt
that when, in the English civil wars, the parliamentary party
styled themselves “the Godly” and their opponents “the Malignants,”
the question at issue, wherever entrance could be gained for these
words, was already decided? Who can estimate how much the Whig
party in this country was damaged by the derisive sarcasm, “All the
decency,” or its opponents by the appellation of “Locofocos”? Is it
not certain that the odious name “Copperheads,” which was so early
in our late civil war affixed to the northern sympathizers with
the South, had an incalculable influence in gagging them, and in
preventing their numbers from multiplying?
It has been truly said that in the distracted times of early
revolution, any nickname, however vague, will fully answer a
purpose, though neither those who are blackened by the odium,
nor those who cast it, can define the hateful appellative. The
historian Hume says that when the term “Delinquents” came into
vogue in England, it expressed a degree and species of guilt not
easily known or ascertained. It served, however, the end of those
revolutionists who had coined it, by involving any person in, or
coloring any action by, “delinquency”; and many of the nobility and
gentry were, without any questions being asked, suddenly discovered
to have committed the crime of “delinquency.” The degree in which
the political opinions of our countrymen were influenced, and their
feelings embittered, some forty years ago, by the appellation
“Federalist,” cannot be easily estimated. The fact that many who
heard the derisive title knew not its origin, and some not even
its meaning, did not lessen its influence,--as an incident related
by Judge Gaston of North Carolina well illustrates. In travelling
on his circuit through the backwoods of that state, he learned
that the people of a certain town had elected a Democrat, in
place of a Whig, to serve them in the legislature. When asked the
reason of this change, his informant, an honest, rough-looking
citizen, replied: “Oh, we didn’t reëlect Mr. A., because he is
a _fetheral_.” “A fetheral!” exclaimed the judge, “what is a
fetheral?” “I don’t know,” was the reply, “but _it ain’t a human_.”
There is no man so insignificant that he may not blast the
reputation of another by fastening upon him an odious or ludicrous
nickname. Even the most shining character may thus be dragged down
by the very reptiles of the race to the depths of infamy. A parrot
may be taught to call names, and, if you have a spite against your
neighbor, may be made to give him a deal of annoyance, without
much wit either in the employer or the puppet. Goethe felt this
when he made the remark above quoted, which was provoked by a
coarse pun made on his name by Herder. Though no man could better
afford to despise such a jest, it rankled, apparently, even in
his great mind; for, forty years later, after Herder’s death, he
spoke of it bitterly, in the course of a very kindly criticism upon
that writer, as an instance of the sarcasm which often rendered
him unamiable. Hotspur would have had a starling taught to speak
nothing but “Mortimer” in the ears of his enemy. An insulting or
degrading epithet will stick to a man long after it has been proved
malicious or false. Who could dissociate with the name of Van Buren
the idea of craft or cunning, after he had become known as the
“Kinderhook Fox”; or who ever venerated John Tyler as the Chief
Magistrate of the nation, after he had been politically baptized as
“His Accidency”? Who can tell how far General Scott’s prospects
for the Presidency were damaged by the contemptuous nickname of
“Old Fuss and Feathers”; especially after he had nearly signed his
own political death-warrant by that fatal allusion to “a hasty
plate of soup,” which convulsed the nation with laughter from the
St. Croix to the Rio Grande? The hero of Chippewa found it hard to
breast the torrent of ridicule which this derisive title brought
down upon him. It would have been easier far to stand up against
the iron shock of the battle-field. Who, again, has forgotten how
a would-be naval bard of America was “damned to everlasting fame”
by a verbal tin-pail attached to his name in the form of one of
his own verses?[39] “I have heard an eminent character boast,”
says Hazlitt, “that he did more to produce the war with Bonaparte
by nicknaming him ‘The Corsican,’ than all the state papers and
documents on the subject put together.” “Give a dog a bad name,”
says the proverb, “and you hang him.” It was only necessary to
nickname Burke “The Dinner Bell,” to make even _his_ rising to
speak a signal for a general emptying of the house.
The first step in overthrowing any great social wrong is to fix
upon it a name which expresses its character. From the hour when
“taxation without representation” came to be regarded by our
fathers as a synonym for “tyranny,” the cause of the colonies was
safe. Had the southern slaves been called by no other name than
that used by their masters,--namely, “servants,”--they would have
been kept in bondage till they had won their freedom by the sword.
The French Revolution of 1789 was fruitful of examples showing the
ease with which ignorant men are led and excited by words whose
real import and tendency they do not understand, and illustrating
the truth of South’s remark, that a plausible and insignificant
word in the mouth of an expert demagogue is a dangerous and
destructive weapon. Napoleon was aware of this, when he declared
that “it is by epithets that you govern mankind.” Destroy men’s
reverence for the names of institutions hoary with age, and you
destroy the institutions themselves. “Pull down the nests,” John
Knox used to say, “and the rooks will fly away.” The people of
Versailles insulted with impunity in the streets, and at the gates
of the Assembly, those whom they called “Aristocrats”; and the
magic power of the word was doubled, when aided by the further
device of calling the usurping Commons the “National Assembly.”
When the title of _Frondeurs_, or “the Slingers,” was given to
Cardinal de Retz’s party, he encouraged its application, “for we
observed,” says he, “that the distinction of a name healed the
minds of the people.” The French showman, who, when royalty and its
forms were abolished in France, changed the name of his “_Royal_
Tiger,” so called,--the pride of his menagerie,--to “_National_
Tiger,” showed a profound knowledge of his countrymen and of the
catchwords by which to win their patronage.
A nickname is the most stinging of all species of satire,
because it gives no chance of reply. Attack a man with specific,
point-blank charges, and he can meet and repel them; but a nickname
baffles reply by its very vagueness; it presents no tangible
or definite idea to the mind, no horn of a dilemma with which
the victim can grapple. The very attempt to defend himself only
renders him the more ridiculous; it looks like raising an ocean to
drown a fly, or firing a cannon at a wasp, to meet a petty gibe
with formal testimony or elaborate argument. Or, if your defence
is listened to without jeers, it avails you nothing. It has no
effect,--does not tell,--excites no sensation. The laugh is against
you, and all your protests come like the physician’s prescription
at the funeral, too late.
The significance of nicknames is strikingly illustrated by the
fact that, as a late writer suggests, you cannot properly hate a
man of different opinions from your own till you have labelled him
with some unpleasant epithet. In theological debates, a heretic
may be defined as a man with a nickname. Till we have succeeded in
fastening a name upon him, he is confounded among the general mass
of the orthodox; his peculiarities are presumably not sufficient to
constitute him into a separate species. But let the name come to us
by a flash of inspiration, and how it sticks to the victim through
his whole life! There is a refinement of cruelty in some nicknames
which resembles the barbarity of the old heathen persecutors, who
wrapped up Christians in the skins of wild beasts, so that they
might be worried and torn in pieces by dogs. “Do but paint an angel
black,” says an old divine, “and that is enough to make him pass
for a devil.” On the other hand, there are loving nicknames, which
are given to men by their friends,--especially to those who are of
a frank, genial, companionable nature. The name of Charles Lamb was
ingeniously transformed into the Latin diminutive _Carlagnulus_;
and the friends of Keats, in allusion to his occasional excess of
fun and animal spirits, punned upon his name, shortening it from
John Keats into “Junkets.”
That prince of polemics, Cobbett, was a masterly inventor of
nicknames, and some of his felicitous epithets will not be
forgotten for many years to come. Among the witty labels with which
he ticketed his enemies were “Scorpion Stanley,” “Spinning Jenny
Peel,” “the pink-nosed Liverpool,” “the unbaptized, buttonless
blackguards” (applied to the Quakers), and “Prosperity Robinson.”
The nickname, “Old Glory,” given by him, stuck for life to Sir
Francis Burdett, his former patron and life-long creditor. “Æolus
Canning” provoked unextinguishable laughter among high and low; and
it is said that of all the devices to annoy the brilliant but vain
Lord Erskine, none was more teasing than being constantly addressed
by his second title of “Baron Clackmannon.” One of the literary
tricks of Carlyle is to heap contemptuous nicknames upon the
objects he dislikes; as, “The Dismal Science” of Political Economy,
“The Nigger Question,” “Pig Philosophy,” “Horse-hair and Bombazine
Procedure,” etc.
The meaning of nicknames, as of many other words, is often a
mystery. Often they are apparently meaningless, and incapable
of any rational explanation; yet they are probably due, in such
cases, to some subtle, imperceptible analogy, of which even their
authors were hardly conscious, When the English and French armies
were encamped in the Crimea, they, by common consent, called the
Turks “Bono Johny;” but it would not be easy to tell why. A late
French prince was called “Plomb-plomb”; yet there is no such
word in the French language, and different accounts have been
given of its origin. To explain, again, why nicknames have such
an influence,--so magical an effect,--is equally difficult; one
might as well try to explain why certain combinations of colors or
musical sounds impart an exquisite pleasure. All we know, upon both
these points, is, that certain persons are doomed to be known by
a nickname; at the time of life when the word-making faculty is in
the highest activity, all their acquaintances are long in labor to
hit off the fit appellation; suddenly it comes like an electric
spark, and it is felt by everybody to be impossible to think of
the victim without his appropriate designation. In vain have his
godfathers and godmothers called him Robert or Thomas; “Bob,” or
“Tom,” or something wholly unrelated to these, he is fated to be to
the end of his days.
Many of the happiest of these headmarks, which stick like a burr
from the moment they are invented, are from sources utterly
unknown; they appear, they are on everybody’s lips, but whence they
came nobody can tell. One of the commonest ways in which nicknames
are suggested is by some egregious blunder which one makes. Thus,
I knew a schoolboy to be asked who demolished Carthage, and upon
his answering “Scorpio Africanus,” to be promptly nicknamed “Old
Scorp.” Another way is by a glaring contradiction between a
man’s name and his character,--when he is ridiculed as sailing
under false colors, or claiming a merit which does not belong to
him. There is in all men, as Trench has observed, a sense of the
significance of names,--a feeling that they ought to be, and in a
world of absolute truth would be, the utterance of the innermost
character or qualities of the persons that bear them; and hence
nothing is more telling in a personal controversy than the exposure
of a striking incongruity between a name and the person who owns
it. I have been told that the late President Lincoln, on being
introduced to a very stout person by the name of Small, remarked,
“Small, Small! Well, what strange names they do give men, to be
sure! Why, they’ve got a fellow down in Virginia whom they call
_Wise_!” In the same spirit, Jerome, one of the Fathers of the
Church, being engaged in controversy with one Vigilantius, _i.e._,
“the Watchful,” about certain vigils which the latter opposed,
stigmatized him as Dormitantius, or “the Sleeper.” But more
frequently the nickname is suggested by the real name where there
is no such antagonism between them,--where the latter, as it is,
or by a slight change, can be made to contain a confession of the
ignorance or folly of the bearer. Thus, Tiberius Claudius Nero, in
allusion to his drunkenness, was called “Biberius Caldius Mero”;
and the Arians were nicknamed “Ariomanites.” What can be happier in
this way than the “Brand of Hell,” applied to Pope Hildebrand; the
title of “Slanders,” affixed by Fuller to Sanders, the foul-mouthed
libeller of Queen Elizabeth; the “Vanity” and “Sterility,” which
Baxter coined from the names of Vane and Sterry; and the term
“Sweepnet,” which that skilful master of the passions, Cicero, gave
to the infamous Prætor of Sicily, whose name, Verres (_verro_), was
prophetic of his “sweeping” the province,--declaring that others
might be partial to the _jus verrinum_ (which might mean verrine
law or boar sauce), but not he? On the other hand, the nickname
_Schinokephalos_, or “onion-head,” which the Athenians gave to
Pericles on account of the shape of his head, was unredeemed by wit
or humor.
The people of Italy are exceedingly fond of nicknames; and it is
an odd peculiarity of many which they give that the persons so
characterized are known only by their nicknames. In the case of
many celebrated persons the nickname has wholly obliterated the
true name. Thus _Guercino_ “Squint Eye,” _Masaccio_ “Dirty Tom,”
_Tintoretto_ “The Little Dyer,” _Ghirlandaio_ “The Garland-Maker,”
_Luca del Robbia_ “Luke of the Madder,” _Spagnoletto_ “The Little
Spaniard,” and _Del Sarto_ “The Tailor’s Son,” would scarcely be
recognized under their proper names of Barbieri, Guido, Robusti,
Barbarelli, Corradi, Ribera, and Vannachi. The following, too,
are all nicknames of eminent persons derived from their places
of birth: Perugino, Veronese, Aretino, Pisano, Giulio Romano,
Correggio, Parmegiano.[40]
There is probably no country, unless it be our own, in which
nicknames have flourished more than in England. Every party there
has had its watchwords with which to rally its members, or to set
on its own bandogs to worry and tear those of another faction; and
what is quite extraordinary is, that many of the names of political
parties and religious sects were originally nicknames given in the
bitterest scorn and party hate, yet ultimately accepted by the
party themselves. Thus “Tory” originally meant an Irish freebooting
bog-trotter,--an outlaw who favored the cause of James II; and
“Whig” is derived from the Scotch name for sour milk, which was
supposed aptly to characterize the disposition of the Republicans.
“Methodists” was a name given in 1729, first to John and Charles
Wesley at Oxford, on account of their close observance of system
and method in their studies and worship, and afterward to their
followers. So in other countries, the “Lutherans” received their
name, in which they now glory, from their antagonists. “Capuchin”
was a jesting name given by the boys in the streets to certain
Franciscan monks, on account of the peaked and pointed hood
(_capuccio_) which they wore. The Dominicans gloried all the more
in their name when it was resolved by their enemies into _Domini
canes_; they were proud to acknowledge that they were, indeed,
“the Lord’s watchdogs,” who barked at the slightest appearance of
heresy, and strove to drive it away. Finally, the highest name
which any man can bear was originally a nickname given by the idle
and witty inhabitants of Antioch, in Asia Minor. In the early days
of Christianity, when the new faith was preached with all the
vigor of intense conviction, and the enthusiasm attendant upon a
fresh experiment in private and social morality; when the apostles
were said to be “turning the world upside down,” and were, indeed,
promulgating a religion which was soon to revolutionize civilized
society; there was, for a long time, great difficulty in finding a
name for the new faith and its professors. The apostles, indeed,
had no name for it whatever; they spoke of the nascent religion
simply as “the way,” or “this way.” Paul says that he “persecuted
_this way_ unto the death,” and at Ephesus, it is said, “there
arose no small stir about _the way_.” By the Jews the converts
to the new religion were called “Nazarenes,” a term of contempt
which they could not, of course, adopt. The Jews believed in the
coming of a Messiah, though they rejected the true one; but the
appearance of any Christ was a wholly new and original idea to the
pagan world, and the constant repetition of the striking name of
Christ in the discourses of the missionaries at Antioch, would have
naturally suggested to the keen-witted Greek pagans around them
to call them after the name of their Master. The Antiochenes were
famous in all antiquity for their nicknames, for inventing which
they had a positive genius; and it is altogether probable,--indeed,
there is hardly a doubt,--that the name “Christian” was originally
a term of ridicule or of reproach, given by them to the first
converts from paganism. It was, in fact, a nickname, designed to
intimate that the teachers and the taught, who talked continually
about their Christ, were a set of fanatics who deserved only to be
laughed at for their infatuation. But what was thus meant as an
insult was instantly accepted by the believers in Christ as a title
of honor, implying that devotion to Christ was not an accident,
but the very essence and soul of their religion. “Nothing else,”
says Canon Liddon, “expressed so tersely the central reason for
the fierce antagonism of the pagans to the new religion: it was
the religion of the divine, but crucified Christ; nothing else
expressed so adequately the Christian sense of what Christianity
was and is,--a religion not merely founded by Christ, but centring
in Christ, so that, apart from Him, it has, properly speaking, no
existence, so that it exists only as an extension and perpetuation
of His life.”
The Dutch people long prided themselves on the humiliating nickname
of _Les Gueulx_, “the Beggars,” which was given in 1566 to the
revolters against the rule of Philip II. Margaret of Parma, then
governor of the Netherlands, being somewhat disconcerted at the
numbers of that party, when they presented a petition to her,
was reassured by her minister, who remarked to her that there
was nothing to be feared from a crowd of beggars. “Great was the
indignation of all,” says Motley, “that the state councillor (the
Seigneur de Berlaymont) should have dared to stigmatize as beggars
a band of gentlemen with the best blood of the land in their veins.
Brederode, on the contrary, smoothing their anger, assured them
with good humor that nothing could be more fortunate. ‘They call
us “beggars!”’ said he; ‘let us accept the name. We will contend
with the Inquisition, but remain loyal to the king, till compelled
to wear the beggar’s sack.... Long live the beggars!’ he cried, as
he wiped his beard, and set the bowl down; ‘_Vivent les gueulx!_’
Then, for the first time, from the lips of those reckless nobles
rose the famous cry, which was so often to ring over land and sea,
amid blazing cities, on blood-stained decks, through the smoke and
carnage of many a stricken field. The humor of Brederode was hailed
with deafening shouts of applause. The shibboleth was invented.
The conjuration which they had been anxiously seeking was found.
Their enemies had provided them with a spell, which was to prove,
in after days, potent enough to start a spirit from palace or
hovel, as the deeds of the ‘wild beggars’ the ‘wood beggars,’ and
the ‘beggars of the sea,’ taught Philip at last to understand the
nation which he had driven to madness.”
In like manner the French Protestants accepted and gloried in the
scornful nickname of the “Huguenots,” as did the two fierce Italian
factions in those of “Guelphs,” or “Guelfs,” and “Ghibellines.” It
was in the twelfth century, at the siege of Weinsberg, a hereditary
possession of the Welfs, that the war-cries, “Hurrah for Welf!”
“Hurrah for Waibling!” which gave rise to the party names, “Welfs”
and “Waiblings” (Italicé, “Guelfs” and “Ghibellines”), were
first heard. Even the title of the British “Premier,” or “Prime
Minister,” now one of the highest dignity, was at first a nickname,
given in pure mockery,--the statesman to whom it was applied
being Sir Robert Walpole, as will be seen by the following words
spoken by him in the House of Commons in 1742: “Having invested
me with a kind of mock dignity, and styled me a ‘Prime Minister,’
they (the opposition) impute to me an unpardonable abuse of the
chimerical authority which _they_ only created and conferred.” It
is remarkable that the nickname Cæsar has given the title to the
heads of two great nations, Germany and Russia (_kaiser_, _czar_).
It is a fortunate thing when men who have been branded with names
intended to make them hateful or ridiculous, can thus turn the
tables on their _dénigreurs_, by accepting and glorying in their
new titles. It was this which Lord Halifax did when he was called
“a trimmer.” Instead of quarrelling with the nickname, he exulted
in it as a title of honor. “Everything good,” he said, “trims
between extremes. The temperate zone trims between the climate in
which men are roasted, and the climate in which men are frozen. The
English Church trims between the Anabaptist madness and the Papist
lethargy. The English constitution trims between Turkish despotism
and Polish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but a just temper between
propensities, any one of which, indulged to excess, becomes vice.
Nay, the perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the
exact equilibrium of attributes, none of which could preponderate
without disturbing the whole moral and physical order of the
world.”[41]
The nicknames “Quaker,” “Puritan,” “Roundhead,” unlike those we
have just named, were never accepted by those to whom they were
given. “Puritan” was first heard in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
and was given to a party of purists who would have reformed the
Reformation. They were also ridiculed, from their fastidiousness
about trivial matters, as “Precisians”; Drayton characterizes them
as persons that for a painted glass window would pull down the
whole church. The distinction between “Roundhead” and “Cavalier”
first appeared during the civil war between Charles I and his
Parliament. A foe to all outward ornament, the “Roundhead” wore his
hair cropped close, while the “Cavalier” was contra-distinguished
by his chivalrous tone, his romantic spirit, and his flowing locks.
All readers of history are familiar with “The Rump,”--the
contemptuous nickname given to the Long Parliament at the close of
its career. The “Rump,” Mr. Disraeli remarks, became a perpetual
whetstone for the loyal wits, till at length its former admirers,
the rabble themselves, in town and country, vied with each other in
burning rumps of beef, which were hung by chains on a gallows with
a bonfire underneath, and proved how the people, like children,
come at length to make a plaything of that which was once their
bugbear.
A member of the British Parliament in the reign of George III is
known as “Single-speech Hamilton,” and is referred to by that
designation as invariably as if it were his baptismal name. He
made one, and but one, good speech during his parliamentary
career. “Boot-jack Robinson” was the derisive title given to a
mediocre politician, who, during a crisis in the ministry of
the Duke of Newcastle, was made Home Secretary and ministerial
leader of the House of Commons. “Sir Thomas Robinson lead us!”
indignantly exclaimed Pitt to Fox; “the duke might as well send
his boot-jack to lead us!” It is said that Mr. Dundas, afterward
Lord Melville, got his nickname from a new word which he introduced
in a speech in the House of Commons, in 1775, on the American
war. He was the first to use the word “starvation” (a hybrid
formation, in which a Saxon root was united with a Latin ending),
which provoked shouts of contemptuous laughter in the House; and
he was always afterward called by his acquaintances, “Starvation
Dundas.” This poor specimen of word-coining was long resisted by
the lexicographers; and one modern philological dictionary omits
it even now; but it has long been sanctioned by usage. One of the
most fatal nicknames ever given to a politician was one fastened by
Sheridan upon Addington, the Prime Minister of England, in a speech
made in Parliament in 1803. Addington was the son of an eminent
physician, and something in his air and manner had given him, to a
limited extent, the name of “the Doctor.” Sheridan, alluding to the
personal dislike of Addington felt by many, quoted the well known
epigram of Martial:
“Non amo te, Sabine, nec possum dicere quare;
Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te;”
and added the English parody:
“I do not like thee, _Doctor_ Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this, I’m sure, I know full well,
I do not like thee, _Doctor_ Fell.”
His droll emphasis on the word “Doctor,” and the repetition of it
in the course of the speech, drew forth peals of laughter; and
henceforth the butt of his ridicule was generally known as “The
Doctor.” The Opposition newspapers caught up the title, and rang
innumerable changes upon it, till finally the Prime Minister was
fairly overwhelmed by the laughter of his enemies, and forced to
resign his office.
Everybody has heard of “Ditto to Mr. Burke”; the victim of this
title was a Mr. Conger, who was elected with Burke to represent
the city of Bristol. Utterly bewildered as to how to thank the
electors after his associate’s splendid speech, he condensed his
own address into these significant words: “Gentlemen, I say ditto
to Mr. Burke, ditto to Mr. Burke!” “Chicken Taylor” was the name
which, in the early part of the century, long stuck to Mr. M. A.
Taylor; he contended against a great lawyer in the House, and then
apologized that he, “a chicken in the law, should venture on a
fight with the cock of Westminster.” “Adullamites,” or “Dwellers in
the Cave,” the name given by Mr. Bright to Mr. Lowe and some of his
Liberal friends,--a name derived from the Scripture story of David
and his followers retiring to a cave,--will probably long continue
to be applied to the members of a discontented faction.
Who does not remember the nickname, “The Spasmodic School of
Poetry,” which was given to three or four young poets some thirty
years ago? It was in the brain of Professor Aytoun that this title
originated, and immediately these writers, whose salient faults
were thus felicitously hit off, were everywhere recognized as
“spasmodists.” For years after, no one of these minstrels could
strike his lyre in public, even in the most humdrum, old-fashioned
way, but the cry of “spasmodist” was raised so loudly that he was
glad to retreat into his wonted obscurity. Even Ben Jonson, the
sturdy old dramatist, did not escape a nickname. His envious rivals
dubbed him “The Limestone and Mortar Poet,” in allusion to his lack
of spontaneity as a poet, and his having begun life as a bricklayer.
Among the other memorable English nicknames, that of “Jemmy
Twitcher,” taken from the chief of Macheath’s gang in “The Beggar’s
Opera,” and applied to Lord Sandwich,--that of “Orange Peel,” given
to Sir Robert Peel by the Irish, the inveterate foes of the House
of Orange,--“the stormy Petrel of debate,” given to Mr. Bernal
Osborne,--“Finality Russell,” fastened upon Lord John Russell
because he wished a certain Reform measure to be final,--“The Dandy
Demagogue,” given to Mr. T. S. Duncombe, the able parliamentary
advocate of the people, who was distinguished by the remarkable
elegance and finish of his attire,--the unique “Dizzy,” into
which his enemies condensed the name of the celebrated Jewish
premier,--and the “Who? Who? Ministry,” applied to Lord Derby’s
Cabinet in 1852,--are preëminently significant and telling. Among
the hundreds of American political nicknames, there are many which
are not remarkably expressive; others, like “Old Bullion” and “Old
Hickory,” are steeped in “the very brine of conceit,” and sum up a
character as if by inspiration.
It is a curious fact that some of the most damaging nicknames
have been terms or epithets which were originally complimentary,
but which, used sarcastically, have been associated with more
ridicule or odium than the most opprobrious epithets. Men hate to
be continually reminded of any one virtue of a fellow-man,--to hear
the changes rung continually upon some one great action or daring
feat he has performed. It seems, indeed, as if a man whose name is
continually dinned in our ears, coupled with some complimentary
epithet, some allusion to a praiseworthy deed which he once did,
or some excellent trait of character, must be distinguished for
nothing else. Unless this is his only virtue, why all this fuss and
pother about it? The Athenians banished Aristides, because they
were tired of hearing him called “the Just.”
Some parents have so great a dread of nicknames that they tax
their ingenuity to invent for their children a Christian name that
may defy nicking or abbreviation. With Southey’s Doctor Dove,
they think “it is not a good thing to be Tom’d or Bob’d, Jack’d
or Jim’d, Sam’d or Ben’d, Natty’d or Batty’d, Neddy’d or Teddy’d,
Will’d or Bill’d, Dick’d or Nick’d, Joe’d or Jerry’d, as you go
through the world.” The good doctor, however, had no such antipathy
to the shortening of female names. “He never called any woman Mary,
though _Mare_, he said, being the sea, was in many respects too
emblematic of the sex. It was better to use a synonym of better
omen, and Molly was therefore preferred, as being soft. If he
accosted a vixen of that name in her worst temper, he Mollyfied
her! On the contrary, he never could be induced to substitute Sally
for Sarah. Sally, he said, had a salacious sound, and, moreover,
it reminded him of rovers, which women ought not to be. Martha he
called Patty, because it came pat to the tongue. Dorothy remained
Dorothy, because it was neither fitting that women should be made
Dolls, nor I-dols! Susan with him was always Sue, because women
were to be sued, and Winnifred, Winny, because they were to be
won.”[42]
The annoyance which may be given to a man, even by an apparently
meaningless nickname, which sticks to him wherever he goes, is well
illustrated by a story told by Hazlitt in his “Conversations with
Northcote,” the painter. A village baker got, he knew not how,
the name of “Tiddy-doll.” He was teased and worried by it till
it almost drove him crazy. The boys hallooed it after him in the
streets, and poked their faces into his shop-windows; the parrots
echoed the name as he passed their cages; and even the soldiers
took it up (for the place was a military station), and marched to
parade, beating time with their feet, and singing “Tiddy-doll,
Tiddy-doll,” as they passed by his door. He flew out upon them at
the sound with inextinguishable fury, was knocked down and rolled
into the kennel, and got up in an agony of rage, his white clothes
drabbled and bespattered with mud. A respectable and friendly
gentleman in the neighborhood, who pitied his weakness, called him
into his house one day, and remonstrated with him on the subject.
He advised him to take no notice of his persecutors. “What,” said
he, “does it signify? Suppose they _do_ call you ‘Tiddy-doll?’ What
harm?” “_There,--there it is again!_” burst forth the infuriated
baker; “you’ve called me so _yourself_. You called me in on purpose
to insult me!” And, saying this, he vented his rage in a torrent
of abusive epithets, and darted out of the house in a tempest of
passion.
The readers of Boswell will remember, in connection with this
subject, an amusing anecdote told of Dr. Johnson. Being rudely
jostled and profanely addressed by a stout fish-woman, as he was
passing through Billingsgate, he looked straight at her, and said
deliberately, “You are a triangle!” which made her swear louder
than before. He then called her “a rectangle! a parallelogram!” but
she was more voluble still. At last he screamed out, “You are a
miserable, wicked _hypothenuse_!” and she was struck dumb. Curran
had a similar ludicrous encounter with a fish-woman at Cork. Taking
up the gauntlet, when assailed by her on the quay, he speedily
found that he was overmatched, and that he had nothing to do but
to beat a retreat. “This, however, was to be done with dignity;
so, drawing myself up disdainfully, I said, ‘Madam, I scorn
all further discourse with such an _individual_!’ She did not
understand the word, and thought it, no doubt, the very hyperbole
of opprobrium. ‘Individual, you wagabond!’ she screamed, ‘what do
you mean by that? I’m no more an individual than your mother was!’
Never was victory more complete. The whole sisterhood did homage to
me, and I left the quay of Cork covered with glory.”
FOOTNOTES:
[39] “The sun has gone down with his battle-stained eye.”
[40] “Roba di Roma,” by W. W. Story.
[41] Macaulay’s “History of England,” Vol. II.
[42] “The Doctor,” Vol, VII.