Thursday, January 05, 2006

 

Nicknames: Postscript

I finally remembered something that's been bugging me since Covered in Oil (amongst others) were having a discussion of hockey nicknames back in November.

We all know that 90-some percent of hockey nicknames are "one syllable of the guy's name, with 's' or 'y' tacked on the end". But the best category exception to this, by a mile, is the nicknames which derive from something too crass for the media in general to explain to fans, and instead of leaving it alone, everyone agrees on some G-rated (but phony) origin, which makes it even funnier.

The defining example of this is Doug Gilmour: "Killer". As far as I know from the final dozen years of his career, we fans were all supposed to believe that this gloss derived from his fierce competitive spirit. The fact that it's an obvious reference to Jerry Lee Lewis and their shared taste in womenfemales is far too impolite to be referenced constantly, if ever, on the air or in print.

I don't recall how the civil suit with the babysitter in St. Louis was resolved; he was never charged criminally. However, I think it's pretty much public record that he hooked up with his second wife Amy in Toronto while (A) she was too young to vote, and (B) he was still married to his first wife.

Anyhoo, I'm not trying to turn this site into the Frank archives; just remember this post next time an announcer tells you that some running back is nicknamed 'Horse' because, uh, he's as strong as one.

Comments:

I actually played hoops with an aptly named "Horse" and ran into the same problem of trying to explain to people how he got the name.
 


Lemme guess: because he always won at H-O-R-S-E?
 


BWA! That would have been a good one. Entirely implausible if you ever saw him play, but certainly good enough to use for the grandparents.
 


"I actually played hoops with an aptly named "Horse""

Whoooaa, there. When did this become a "R" rated blog?
 


HA! Two killer posts by jhuck today.
 


Great, now sacamano has to make up some phony reason for another guy's nickname, just to drop us back to TV14.
 


I think jhuck will also require a "phony" expansion of the rules of "hoops" in order to return us to PG.

"Playing Hoops with Horse" does have a disturbingly porn-like quality about it.
 


I represent the BHC Corportation, who owns the rights, and produced the film "Filling Hoops with Horse".
Please cease and desist with this line of humour or further legal action will have to be taken.
 


Lord knows I had a tough time trying to account politely for my college nickname, which was "Dude With A Huge Penis".
 


That's catchy Cosh. It might be time to res(e)rrect that one, say at your new Macleans Election Blog
 


Ah! That reminds me, there was two close friends in the year ahead of me at U nicknamed "Gherkin" (I suppose you could dream up a competing source for this nickname) and "Horsecock" (no dice).
 


Horses.... playing hoops.... I haven't even seen it, but "Brokeback Mountain" keeps coming to mind.
 


"Dude With a Huge Penis" was also my nickname.

Well, only in Miss Bennet's class.

And come to think of it, it was "Dude, That's Gross"..... without the "Dude".
 


Yes! I knew there was another one in the back of my mind...
 

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