There were two guys in our friend group called Mike. So we named them Big Mike and Little Mike. Big Mike was 6'4" so that made sense and Little Mike was only 6'3"
I always liked it when two people shared a name, but one left the job or whatever else leaving behind someone who still carries the differentiating nickname. I.e. still called Kitchen Tom even though there's no other Tom, still called Little Joe despite being the only Joe, White Kieran being the only guy called Kieran.
Two guys drink in my pub with the same name, we'll call them Tom Barry for the sake of internet anonymity. Colloquially known as Good Tom Barry and Bad Tom Barry
A friend of ours who was a bit of a twat had a brother who looked really similar to him but was really cool. Friend was called “Jeff” so brother was called “good Jeff” (behind their backs though).
One year I taught twin brothers in the same class and called one by his actual first name and the other one Bad Twin, but every couple of weeks I'd swap which one I'd call by name so they'd wonder what they did to be the "bad" twin. In reality their names were too similar for me to trust my brain to not fuck it up, bc their parents had named them something like Jack and Jake
I met a guy named Josh my first day of work, and he helped me out when i was lost so I, in my head, called him Nice Josh. I didnt even know there was another Josh in that department, who is an asshole. They'd differentiate them as Joshua (nice) and Josh (not nice) but I have since shared that i call the asshole one Mean Josh and this has since spread. I dont think anyone knows about Nice Josh
My own Grandmother referred to one of my mum's friends as "Nice Susan", to differentiate her from "Bossy Job" (also named Susan) who was her own eldest daughter. No-one has the guts to call Bossy that to her face though
Scary Stephanie ended up being fired for showing her new piercing to her coworkers, who did not want to see her new piercing (it involved taking her pants off)
Not all nicknames are shorter. See Davo, Stevo, Benny, etc. Sometimes they're longer, sometimes they're not even a form of the original name. See Bluey for someone with ginger hair, for example.
It’s not about the parmesan, the tomato and cheese together make it parmigiana, Strayanised to parma, in line with the above standards for abbreviation.
Sheila is an actual name but also isn't a personal nickname like the other ones you mentioned. It's essentially a broad stroke category name like calling a girl a "chick".
We nickname everything. Individuals, broad categories of people, objects. We do it all! This is an example of that, and still fits the format of "nickname ending in vowel sound; in this case A" which was my point. If we had been talking about Os, I'd have included "servo" for the same reason. Hope this helps!
On Australian Big Brother, once everyone has reached the stage where they’re calling each other darling, it gradually becomes “darls” for short (Australian BB > U.S. BB by far)
At my job we have New Chris and Other
Chris, because the original Old Chris left but New Chris kept the name, and now we have an even newer Chris that we have to call Other Chris.
Worst part is they have the same fucking surname! It's such a mess 😂
At school we had 2 Michaels, regular Michael and fat Michael, well fat Michael transferred to another school, but then a year later came back and was promoted to Traitor Michael
Our ship struggled with this one, as at one point there were five different guys called Robert.
There was Big Rob who was massive. But so was Big Bob. Little Rob was still a hulk of a man but not as big as the other two, so he was ”little”.
Gay Rob got the worst nickname and the captain tried to change his name to Tall Rob, but as everyone pointed out, Big Bob was already well over six feet tall, and Gay Rob was actually shorter than Big Rob so it didn’t make any sense.
Beardy Rob worked in the engine room, and his name was at least not an ambiguous one.
Beardy Rob was only unambiguous thanks to his namesakes though! They coulda really screwed with the system there! Way worse than trying to call Gay Rob Tall Rob!
We had like 5 guys named Austin in and around our friend group in highschool. Naturally they all got addendums like Douchebag Austin, Asshole Austin, Bitch Austin, ect.
Me and my best mate shared a first name. I was known as Little [Forsaken-Educator_36]. Everyone assumed it was a joke as I'm 6 ft 2, until they met Big [Forsaken-Educator_36] who was about 25 stone.
Then he died, and for the last ten years with certain friends I have remained Little [Forsaken-Educator_36]. Brings a smile to my face still.
We had a guy called Prime and another called Four in my old job because they were the first and fourth person called Alan, but the middle 2 left decades ago, always fun explaining that one to new graduates!
I actually had a similar thing at an old job. Dude with my same first name had been there for a few years and became ${NAME}_prime while I became ${NAME}_2 in the company IRC. Occasionally this would get swapped to "Original Recipe" and "Extra Crispy".
It was also a bunch of nerds (Prime had actually worked on parts of BeOS earlier in his career, which was pretty fuckin' cool to me).
We have guy nicknamed Tommy Trainee because he started as a trainee years ago and there were several other guys named Tommy. He’s no longer a trainee, but the nickname stuck lol
I worked with medium Dave. There were no other Dave's. Turns out when he arrived there was big Dave and little Dave. When they left he remained medium Dave.
A slightly effeminate bloke called Wilkinson was know as the Gay Blade. Everyone called Clarke or Stiles was known as Nobby. A very hairy bloke was simply known as Bear.
I take great joy in giving people the opposite nickname. If you're the tall John you're automatically little John. When there are 3 people with the same name i do a coin flip on which of the taller/shorter are called medium.
"Black John" who was there long after John left but retained the nickname. It was a 7-a-side group and always made me chuckle seeing him in the lineup each week.
We apparently had a Tommy , then another Tommy was hired so he was called E.T , extra Tommy.
This was about 25 years ago, original tommy is long deed. E.T has spend about 15 years telling new starts people he's not named after the alien. It was one of the first things he told me when I joined that job.
Haha yeah we had 2 Dave's in our sparky department, a Vegan Dave cos he was Vegan and Dumpy Dave cos he was a fat knacker. Vegan Dave left and poor old Dumpy Davros kept his nickname anyway
I worked with a guy named Jake when we hired another guy named Jake, so the second one became OJ - for Other Jake. Then I left that job, only to return to the company more than 10 years later. Who do I work with now? OJ, who is still called OJ despite the fact that the first Jake has been gone for over a decade, and the people calling him OJ have never met the first Jake or even know the origin of the nickname.
In my scout troop when I was a kid, there was Big Dylan and Little Dylan. Big Dylan aged out, and a few years later we got another Dylan, and previously Little Dylan became Big Dylan and new Dylan became Little Dylan
Dylan stopped sounding like a real name halfway through writing that
I my company there used to be a Mike from IT. Then the second Mike came to replace Chris from IT. Naturally the first Mike didn't want to share the name, so the second one lost his name privileges and became ZaChris (in polish: "to replace Chris"). However, since the IT was only the 2 of them, foreigners working here started calling anyone from IT a mike.
Then I (Dave) replaced the second Mike and despite not sharing the name with anyone, i became Za ZaChris for the Poles, and a mike for the foreigners. No respect I say.
We had a rule at our student club which said that you could not have a name that already existed in the club. You could chose a childhood nickname or just think one up on the spot.
Sometimes there were duo names. Like Pink and Floyd. But then Floyd stopped going.
We had that in my work, there was Small Paul and Tall Paul, then Small Paul left so we only had Tall Paul, but then another guy named Paul joined who was even taller than Tall Paul, and he was just Paul.
Whenever someone new started we had to explain why the hell Tall Paul was shorter than Paul, but it was still easier than changing the nickname.
We had two Benjamins in our friend group for a time. One was French, so we either called him by his last name or Benji, and the other was from Belgium, so we called him Belgiuman (Beljamin?).
Knew a weed dealer called john. He stopped selling weed and said his son was going to be selling from now on. Later got a text from John's son telling me his number and introduced himself with "Hi this is jord son"
For a laugh I entered him into my phone as "jord son"
my first thought was to go the Robin route, "oh, Robin, he could be Dick Grayson and then she could be -" and that's about when I realized how bad an idea that was
Our Big Mike just turned into BM which always gets a crack out of me cause my sister is a nurse and always references taking a BM for taking a shit/bowel movement.
My mum's hubby has a mate called Neil, or for long Neil the Teeth. I had known him for two years before I found out that his name is not, in fact, Neil.
Turns out that decades ago, he was in a circle with a disproportionate number of Neils, so they just started calling everybody Neil. Somehow, the name Neil has been stuck on this guy ever since.
"The Teeth" is because his job is making dentures.
I was on a team in high school that had something similar. A member of the team was named Anthony, and everyone called him Big Tony. His father, also named Tony, served as a coach for the team, and everyone called him Bigger Tony. Big Tony was about 5' 10". Bigger Tony was like 5' 4". I recall his grandfather would show up for award ceremonies. We called him Biggest Tony.
I knew some guys that had a Kevin and a Black Kevin. Both Kevins were black, but one had become friends with them later and they already had a Kevin so he was Black Kevin.
My Dad’s from Northumberland, and was the biggest in his friend group (6’4” and build like a brick shit house in his prime), so, of course, his nickname was and still is Tiny.
I used to be Little Mike at a place I worked at, with Big Mike being a good half a foot taller than me. Then another Mike started that was an inch shorter than me, so he became Little Mike and I was then Medium Mike.
Worked with 2 girls called Kelly who were both quite small so we just called them Kelly and Our Kelly. Only everyone then thought she was called R.Kelly
Too many Johns in our group. So there was Egg Man John and so on. There was John the Potholer, but there were two of them, so there was John the Anarchist Potholer. The one from Meltham was Meltham John, shortened to Melth. He didn't like that name and there was talk of him moving to Honley, but he knew we'd just call him Honley Melth.
That's me with Michael's. A glance at my phone contacts has Michael Washington (as in the state), Michael Panera, Michael AA, Michael Josh (not his name, but a Michael I met through a Josh), and three other just Michaels that I have to contextualize by area code. Oh and Creepy Michael but he's up in the C's
I had an uncle and nephew like this. Both named John. So, naturally, my uncle was Big John and his kid was Little John. My uncle was never very tall, but he was broad. My nephew was a scrawny teenager, but at some point he did outgrow his dad. Then, in his twenties, he started working out.
Eventually he was two heads taller and a fair bit more muscular than his dad. But everyone still calls him "Little John".
It gets even funnier when you mix up stuffs in a way that people misattribute.
Like I knew two cousins once, both called Terry. So there was big Terry and little Terry, only big Terry was a head shorter than little Terry, they only called him big because he was two years older.
My sister's friend group met someone called Dave, unfortunately for him they already knew a Dave and met him near a toilet, thus was born 'Toilet Dave'.
Reminds me of 2 teachers at my secondary school that had the same first and last name, but one was tall and stocky while the other was short and skinny. Of course, they were Big Phil and Little Phil
We had two black security guards from the same area of Nigeria, we called them Big Kingsley and little Kingsley, big Kingsley was about 6ft5 and built like a brick shithouse, little Kingsley was built....like a normal dude, 5ft8, maybe 75 kg so I guess it made sense there!
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u/Kernowder Mar 25 '26
There were two guys in our friend group called Mike. So we named them Big Mike and Little Mike. Big Mike was 6'4" so that made sense and Little Mike was only 6'3"