Gert or Gertie as a Nickname for the Women in Your Life

Lana in Evansville, Indiana, says all the women in her family affectionately call each other Gert or Gertie. She has discovered that one of her friends also uses the name Gertie as a term of endearment for the women in her own family. Although in this case it seems to function as a generic term, the female equivalent of the names Joe or Mac, for a couple of decades starting in the 1920s, the name Dirty Gertie was slang for “a promiscuous woman,” immortalized in the song “Dirty Gertie from Bizerte,” Bizerte being a town in Tunisia. This is part of a complete episode.