Nicknames 


This is a 23-minute audio exposition on the theme of nicknames. We Americans will take any name and shorten it. Some of these nicknames we come up with are for our cities and regions and others impact us in various ways. I explore a variety of these nicknames and comment on the general effects of this ubiquitous domestic approach to "naming" things, places, companies and people.


 

This audio essay goes over a variety of ways in which we - Americans - shorten names for the many reasons we do this. We shorten names because they're too long, we give "new" names to old, familiar elements of our society and we create nicknames when we don't like the "name" something comes with. In the case of people's names, sometimes this works, but generally it doesn't work as well for the individual being nicknamed. Take a listen - you'll be familiar with a lot of what I say, but not necessarily all. Oh, if I've somehow missed the boat on your favorite nickname - definitely email me and I'll be sure to correct my thinking.

[ed. note: The MP3 file here is Nicknames2.mp3, for a few hours there was another file, Nicknames.mp3, which was up. I had erroneously not listened to that audio file in its entirety and - to my chagrin - found there were about three edits which I had failed to execute. Hence the replacement file. Again, note that the rhythm of these podcasts is driven by the fact that I'm walking up and down hills while recording and when I edit out the breaths and pauses and "umms" and "you knows" that process introduces a weirdly appealing (to me) rhythm to these oratories which almost makes them sound like a ransom note looks. An interesting effect - which, since it's intentional, is not a "side" effect.] 

Posted: Sat - July 9, 2005 at 01:15 PM          

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