Other forms: nicknames
A nickname is the short friendly name people call you instead of your real one. His nickname is Tiny, get a nickname, known by a nickname.
Some come from the name itself — Bill for William, Bob for Robert — and others from a habit, a joke or an incident, which is why the best ones are impossible to explain to outsiders. Nicknames are given rather than chosen, and choosing your own rarely works. Note the verb, to nickname; and that places and teams have them too: the Big Apple, the Gunners.
1nounnicknameA short friendly name used instead of somebody's real one.
“His real name is Robert, but everyone calls him by his nickname, Bobby.”
nickname is an informal name.
Middle English an eke name meant an additional name — eke meant also, and survives in eke out. The n of an migrated to the noun, so a nickname is an ekename with a stolen letter.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ewg-
Middle English
neke name
English, today
nickname
Built from
From Middle English neke name, alteration (due to a of an ekename as a nekename) of earlier ekename (“nickname”), from eke (“additional”) + name. Compare Old Norse aukanafn, auknafn, auknefni, Faroese eyknevni, Danish øgenavn, Norwegian Nynorsk aukenamn, Swedish öknamn, and German Low German Ökelname. For other similar cases of incorrect division, see also apron, daffodil, newt, orange, umpire.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA