nicknames.. blah, blah, blah

by kareshikanojonojijyuo

 nicknames.. hmm.. What is it in a nick-name?

It suddenly occured to me, the lecture we had last week when we discussed about nicknames, that I can relate, and maybe contribute some ideas to the discussion. Though the discussion was last week. haha.

About nicknames, I remember back in my secondary-one days, everyone in class had a nickname. Ranging from cheesy and cutsey ones to supposed “cool” ones.

Different categories of nicknames were invented by different categories of people in my school–the ones who were into anime, mangas and cartoons named themselves and their friends after manga or anime characters, while those who were into hollywood’s red carpet adopted celebrities’ or top fashion model’s first names. For those who weren’t into any of these two, they mostly named themselves after tongue-and-ear-pleasing names.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mean tongue-pleasing names as being tasty and all but I mean tongue-and-ear-pleasing names as in nice-to-pronounce and nice-to-hear names, or nicknames.

I remember my group of friends being anime fanatics such that they demand for everyone to call them by their favourite anime character’s nicknames. It was hilarious. I had to go around calling each of them by their favourite character’s names.

“Goku, Goku!”

“Sano, Sano!”

And unfortunately, I was tagged “Sanzo” too. After a character from a manga named Saiyuki who is a corrupted monk made their appearance on starhub cable tv channel 19, AXN.

So, for the next 3 years of my school life, I lived being known as “Sanzo.” It felt wierd at first but slowly, you get used to it and even start to respond to it. Surprised? I am myself too. Silly? I agree whole-heartedly.

For the rest of my classmates, they adopted nicknames like “Valentino” and “Aguilera” which was directly borrowed from their favourite celebrities and designers.

Thinking about it now. what would I say to it? Childish? Or was it that we couldn’t appreciate names given to us by our parents?

Maybe we all just fell into Erik Erikson’s category of “teenagers going through the Identity Crisis phase” where we were all jsut searching for ourselves within ourselves, and experiencing different sorts of lifestyle and practice to see whichever really suits us. You know, like whatever happens in Erikson’s identity moratorium.

Or maybe it was just the effect of Bacon’s “idols of the theatre.” where we all just submit to a certain culture.

Or maybe even both.

Any takes?