Pseudonym

‘What’s in name? A weed by any other name is still a weed.’

I recently heard that quote from an animated flamingo called Featherstone. Ok, so it’s not ‘exactly’ Shakespeare but I think we can allow a cartoon about gnomes based on a tale of teenage suicide some wiggle room.

Any child or unemployed person with a Cineworld pass knows, I am of course talking about Gnomeo and Juliet the 3D movie based on The Bards opus. Having developed something of a thing for Emily Blunts plummy British accent I took myself along to see (hear) her voice the titular Juliet. Not expecting much from the movie it was quite enjoyable and it did give me a nice intro into this week’s piece.

I’m incredibly fussy about what people call me. My opinion on somebody is instantly affected depending on how they address me. They say you only get one chance to make a first impression. Why would you mess that up by calling me something that isn’t my name? Getting someone’s name right is a simple courtesy.

I once worked a job where it was customary to change the names of anyone who might have an unusual name, usually foreign nationals. It’s not as if they had particularly hard names to say in the first place. One of the managers decided that one Chinese workers name was too difficult to pronounce so that became Paul.

Of course if he’d been Irish on a British Building site he would have been called Paddy. Apparently that was different. That was racial. This was just convenient. I’m not sure how ‘Bo Heng’ felt about that. I know how I would have felt about it

Mine is a very simple and common name. It’s not hard to pronounce or remember. Yet the amount of times I am called something different is staggering. Why do people feel the need to add syllables to a four letter word when they address me? I’m not Johnner, Johnno, Johnser or JohnJoe. And I am certainly not Johnny.

I used to have a boss. He reminded me of a cliché spouting parody of a radio DJ. Like Alan Partridge or Tony Fenton with less charisma. Every day he would greet me as Johnny. It used to drive me nuts. His desk was behind mine so I would be typing (or more likely arsing on the internet) and I would hear his awful voice float over me. “Hey Johnny, have you got a second?” I would stop dead in my tracks. My fingers would claw up and my shoulders would tense.

The first couple of times I asked him nicely would he mind not calling me Johnny. No problem he said, he’d been in the army and all the Johns were Johnny so he just assumed I’d be the same. I smiled and moved on to whatever business we had. Then the next day he would call me Johnny again. Oops he forgot. I wouldn’t have minded so much if his name hadn’t been John as well.

It’s not that I’m against nicknames per se but let’s try and have some degree of originality. Hoops and Jayhaitch (or J.H. for those who haven’t figured that one out yet) are perfectly acceptable. Hoops is a derivative of a childhood nickname of Hula Hoops. I like Hoops though. It makes me sound ‘street.’

At least nicknames can be attributed to some sense of acquired familiarity. People who think they are close enough to you to have a pet name for you. This is understandable.
Strangers who refer to me as ‘Bud’ ‘Buddy’ ‘Pal’ or ‘Mate’, however, have no such luxury. It really makes me cringe when someone calls me one of these. I’m not your buddy. I don’t even know you.

This is especially annoying when it’s perpetrated by those cocky arseholes that are raising money for charities. You know the ones in the bibs with the clipboards. “Hey there buddy, have you got a minute to support the starving babies?” or “Alright mate, you want to give money to stop animal cruelty?”

I hate those guys. Their over familiarity is not endearing, it’s rude. Considering most of them are getting paid for it, if they want me to give them some of my money, they should act professionally. It sounds ridiculously old fashioned, but surely ‘Sir’ is appropriate when soliciting donations.

Oddly enough, I’m ok with being called ‘dude’ or ‘man’. It seems softer, less sarcastic. Maybe it’s because buddy and pal can be used in an aggressive manner. Dude just seems warmer. Perhaps it to do with the connection the words have with the hippy movement. More likely it’s to do with The Big Lebowski.

“...I’m the Dude. So that’s what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing”

Ok so maybe if the Dude isn’t going to get hung up on what he is called maybe I shouldn’t either. I suppose there are more important things to worry about in life. After all if ‘the Dude abides,’ maybe I should too.

Just don’t call me Johnny.