j. B.S.

I titled this blog post jBS because I think it's funny, and because I'm sure nobody has thought of this before.

It's actually nothing bad about JBS or anything. I was just thinking about it because I've noticed some people call Jordan 'JBS' because of her initials and nobody calls Danny 'DPH' because of his initials. I mean, they both have the hyphenated name thing going so why not.

Is it because Danny is spanish, because that's racism(sexism?).

Then I realized that I lied to all of you guys. I know why it's JBS and it's not DPH. It's because people like nicknames. Nicknames are comforting and make people feel apart of the group. Unless they are bad nicknames, then they feel ostracized.

I've done a lot of thinking about nicknames in my day, and I feel nicknames are a very interesting part of society. There are two things that have to happen, and a couple of other things that help, for a nickname to flourish.

One thing that has to happen is that the nickname has to be catchy, to stick. Or sticky, to catch. It has to be something that people will remember to call that chosen person.

It also has to be short. There are only a couple of instances that I can recall where I remember a nickname sticking that was longer than maybe three syllables. The actual name might be longer, but the long name usually gets shortened into a fun short name.

One thing that really helps a nickname stick is to have someone be introduced as the nickname. If the entire time you have known someone, you have been calling them 'pickles', you are more likely to keep calling them 'pickles'.

Another thing that helps with nicknames is repetition. I have never known a good nickname to stick when you only use it once a month, or so. People usually forget. If everyone were to start calling DPH: 'the duck', there is a good chance he will start being known as 'the duck'.

I think these are puddles of buckets of fun.

UNCH