Sports Nicknames

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Paul Maffin. I’m a pastor up in Georgia, Vermont.

Hi, Paul. Welcome to the show.

How are you doing?

Well, like so many people, I’ve been intrigued by the linguistic pyrotechnics surrounding Jeremy Lin’s rise to stardom for the New York Knicks.

Oh, yeah.

New word puns are spawned every day, such as lintastic, linderella, linvasion, Linsanity.

And I hear that Jeremy Lin has even filed a patent to protect his trademark word, Linsanity.

Linsanity, yeah.

And then, of course, you’ve got Tim Tebow with his trademark bowing down on one leg, referred to as Tebowing.

Well, it got me wondering how far back this phenomenon goes, and my curiosity led me to think about Herman Ruth, better known as the babe or the bambino.

So here’s what I was wondering. Is there a longer history to this playful use of famous sports players’ names?

And are all of the terms fairly ephemeral, or have some of them actually stuck in the English language?

So we’re kind of talking about using sports figures as a way to come up with new words.

And sometimes these words reflect what we think of those sports figures, all the Jeremy Lin stuff.

And sometimes it’s about what we think of the, I guess, the hoo-ha around them, the noise, the commotion, right?

Oh, sure.

Because Jeremy Lin, as far as I know, doesn’t have one grand nickname that’s stuck, very unlike Babe Ruth.

That’s true.

And it’s interesting that it’s the Lin part. I mean, nobody’s talking about the Jeremizer or anything like that.

Well, there’s an interesting component to that.

There was a great story in the New York Times in 2011 where they were talking about nicknames in sports.

And one of the things this article said that really stuck with me, and I’ve heard this from my friends and colleagues who study names, is that we have more and varied names now than we used to.

Used to John and Mike and Joe and the Emily’s and Elizabeth’s and Beth’s. Those were far more common.

But you can actually look at the Social Security data for new births and new registered births and see that the percentage of unique names has gone up.

Therefore, you don’t need to distinguish between the 11 Johns in your class anymore.

There’s no need, at least for that one particular reason that we make nicknames, to come up with a variety of different names for these people.

There’s a couple great books that collect great sports nicknames.

And some of these nicknames are kind of astonishing in their backstories. Just interesting stuff.

I’m trying to think of one.

Well, there’s the basketball player who’s known as Big Baby.

Big Baby. I don’t even know his real name.

Well, there was the refrigerator. You know, now that you mention it, do you remember Refrigerator Perry?

Yeah, sure.

Do you remember him, Paul?

Sure, yeah.

Yeah, he sort of leapt over the wall between sports and the rest of the world.

Yeah, I mean, whoever heard of Herman Ruth?

Yeah, I would have no idea.

Rather than Babe Ruth.

Yeah, I would have thought that was baby Ruth’s dad or something.

All right.

Well, thanks for calling, Paul. Really appreciate it.

Hey, great to talk with you guys.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

We’re talking about words and language here.

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