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:

and added the English parody:

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.”