Appropriated Appellation / Live-Action TV

• Much like the movie and animated TV show, in The Adventures of Superman (from the 1950s), Superman gets his name from the Daily Planet. His first public heroic was rescuing a man who had fallen off of an airship, and the man later described him as "some sort of... Super-guy...", and shortly afterwards Lois calls him Superman.
• This is also a Real Life example. Seattle-based sketch show Almost Live! had aerospace-engineer-turned-comedian Bill Nye as a cast member. He kept correcting host Ross Shafer's pronunciation of "gigawatt". Shafer's reply was "Who do you think you are, Bill Nye the Science Guy?" Needless to say the name stuck, and the rest is history.
• Arrested Development had an episode where Tobias goes to prison and the inmates call him Dorothy. This changes when he accidentally convinces the biggest baddest con to commit suicide. Soon Tobias is running the prison and "Dorothy" becomes a name to be feared.
• Arrowverse:
  • Arrow:
    • A bitter ex-vigilante tells Roy Harper that the Arrow only sees him as "a weapon in his arsenal". Oliver Queen decides that "Arsenal" is a good Code Name for Roy.
    • Averted with Oliver who doesn't like being called "The Hood" and so starts calling himself the Arrow instead, which eventually filters through to the public via his Friend on the Force.
    • Thea Queen would prefer to be called "Red Arrow", but her brother tells Team Arrow to call her by his Affectionate Nickname of "Speedy" instead. She gradually takes a liking to the name, and refuses an invitation by Cisco from Team Flash to think up a better one.
    • China White's real name is Chien Na-Wei, implying that she decided to use the Western mispronunciation as a Code Name.
  • The Flash (2014):
    • When Cisco calls Leonard Snart "Captain Cold" in a confrontation, Snart's expression clearly indicates his approval of the name. In later appearances, he insists on the name.
    • Later in the season, some of the other super-villains get a bit jealous of the Cisco-named bad guys running around Central City and outright ask him for an equally cool nickname. Two notable examples include the Golden Glider and even the Big Bad, The Reverse-Flash.
    • In the comics, Cold's team is known as "the Rogues." After Barry flippantly refers to them as Snart's "rogues gallery," Snart practically giggles.
    Cold: The Rogues. Cute.
    • Caitlin suggests calling Hannibal Bates, a metahuman shapeshifter, "Everyman" to Barry. She doesn't realize that it's Bates himself disguised as Barry, who admits that he likes it.
    • Rosa Dillion takes the name Top after Jesse Quick commented that her dress makes her look like a top.
    • When they’re stuck in the speed force during Crisis on Infinite Earths Hour 4, Movie-Barry Allen (who has gone without his famous code name during the events of Justice League (2017)) takes a liking to "The Flash" after encountering his Earth-1 counterpart.
• Babylon 5:
  • A minor version when the Centauri Republic reconquers Narn with Shadow backing, they imprison all government officials and appoint a puppet regime, including a new ambassador to Babylon 5. G'Kar is replaced and no longer able to call himself "Ambassador G'Kar", and Londo makes a point of calling him "Citizen G'Kar", intended to demean him and mock his being stripped of his position. Nonetheless, G'Kar actually begins to regard the title as something of an honorific, and continues to use it when he becomes a rallying point for Narn resistance.
  • Averted with Sebastian, a man who was captured by Vorlons in the late 1800s from London, who mentions to Captain Sheridan that Sebastian's attempt at a crusade on Earth many years ago left his name and original intent obscured by the evil of his actions and now he is only known as "Jack".
• Subverted on The Big Bang Theory. Howard knew that the other astronauts would give him a nickname; he planned to influence their decision by having his phone ring during a videoconference: the ringtone would be Elton John's song "Rocket Man". Unfortunately, his mother butted in and asked him if he wanted some Froot Loops for breakfast, and the other astronauts called him "Froot Loops" from then on.
• Baldrick in Blackadder the Third suspects his first name might be "Sodoff", because when he was playing in the gutter with the other snipes, he'd say "Hello, my name's Baldrick" and they'd reply "Yes, we know. Sod off, Baldrick." His descendent in Blackadder Goes Forth is Private S. Baldrick.
• In Black Lightning (2018), Technocrat decides to keep the name the ASA gave him when he was their lab rat, although he usually goes by TC.
• Buffyverse:
  • Spike was known as "William the Bloody" during life, because his poetry was bloody awful, and one critic said that he'd rather have a railroad spike driven through his head than listen to it. Upon becoming a vampire, he took up those insults and "granted the critic's wish".
  • Angel. Liam took his vampire name from his sister, who mistook her resurrected older brother for an angel.
• In an episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert jokingly claims that white people need to stop feeling ashamed of being called "slavers". Instead, they need to own the name. They're not "slavers"; they're "slavas".
  Stephen Colbert: All the slavas in the house say "Hey!" Slava, please!
• Daredevil (2015):
  • The titular character is called "The Devil of Hell's Kitchen" by the newspapers, until he apprehends Wilson Fisk at the end of the first season.
  • In Season 2, The Punisher is similarly nicknamed by the papers. By the last episode, he also has appropriated his logo from the picture on the newspaper headline proclaiming his death.
• Doctor Who
  • In "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone", the Doctor dubs one of the Weeping Angels in the area "Angel Bob", after the man it killed and whose voice it stole to communicate with. Said Weeping Angel is quick to adopt that nickname for itself and both responds to it and refers to itself by it in conversation with the Doctor.
  • In "Spyfall", the secret agent known as "O" took the Code Name because the head of British intelligence would say, "Oh god!" every time he walked into the room. After The Reveal that O is actually The Master he enjoys the Doctor's Oh, Crap! response, implying that's really why he chose that name.
• Game of Thrones:
  • The Unsullied, highly conditioned slave soldiers, are given names like Red Flea or Black Rat by their masters in order to remind them that they are nothing but vermin. When Daenerys frees them and allows them to take whatever names they wish, Unsullied commander Grey Worm decides to keep his own, considering it lucky: it was the name he had when he was freed from slavery.
  • Played with with Tyrion. He is known by several derogatory nicknames ("imp", "dwarf", "half-man") and he dislikes them all. While it appears that he continues to dislike it, "imp" has been used in affectionate tones as well (by Bronn for instance). As for "half-man", after Tyrion led a sortie against enemy troops, his troops used "half man" as a war cry. Tyrion recommends this to Jon Snow: "Let me give you some advice, bastard: never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you."
  • Davos was knighted for his services smuggling food (onions among it) and was disparagingly called "the Onion Knight" by other nobles, who disliked him for being lowborn. Davos doesn't mind this at all and his response was to put an onion on his personal arms.
  • The Blackfish's name is derived from a snarky retort to his brother Hoster calling him a Black Sheep. Now he freely admits, "People have been calling me 'Blackfish' for so long they don't remember my real name." Indeed, his real name Brynden is only All There in the Manual.
  • Inverted in "Kissed By Fire" when Jaime specifically rejects his sobriquet in his delirium:
    Brienne: Guards, help! The Kingslayer!
    Jaime: Jaime... my name is Jaime.
  • Discussed by the "High Sparrow", who's aware the name is generally derogatory but takes it in stride, noting there are far worse burdens to bear.
• Garrison's Gorillas: Lt. Hanley from Combat! referred to Lt. Garrison's team as "Gorillas" in the pilot episode. The team adopts this as their unofficial title.
• There's a song featured in Glee called "Loser like me", which is written by the Glee clubbers saying to their bullies that they may be losers, but that's hardly a set back and is actually an advantage for their future ambitions.
• In Gotham, it's apparent that "The Penguin" will eventually be one of these; Cobblepot hates the name, treating it as his Berserk Button, but the series is a prequel and that is what he's called in other works. Halfway through the first season, Sal Maroni tells him he needs to own the name so that people can't use it as an insult. By the time of the second season, he says the name has grown on him.
• A flashback in Have Gun – Will Travel shows that the hero, Paladin, got the name in this manner. A villainous employer falsely made him believe that a gunfighter calling himself Smoke was a villain terrorizing a town. The dying Smoke revealed the truth and sarcastically referred to his killer as a "paladin". His killer adopted that name and to atone, becoming a hero while wearing Smoke's costume.
• Holby City: Percival Durant, a wildly anti-authoritarian surgeon working in a Ghanaian clinic at the time of his introduction on the show, earned the nickname "Abra" from his colleagues and patients, which he wears with pride. It roughly translates to "troublemaker".
• Shotaro Hidari and Philip received the name "Kamen Rider" from the citizens of Fuuto, which they use with pride. Interestingly, it's the villains that refer to them as Kamen Rider Double.
  • Most of the "Neo-Heisei" Kamen Rider shows have the main character adopt the Rider name in this fashion. Fourze learns about his predecessors from his school's Perky Goth and closet Rider fangirl, and himself becomes a Rider fanboy, eagerly looking for any opportunity to meet his Sempai. In The Movie, Fourze explains the name to Wizard, who decides it sounds pretty cool. And then in his Post-Script Episodes, Wizard turns around and introduces Gaim to the term (though in his own show, he's referred to as Armored Rider Gaim, which is still an example of this trope).
    • Gaim has another example: When dealing with DJ Sagara, Ryoma Sengoku asks what his real name is, and he responds "Why don't we go with the name that you gave me: Helheim", which is the name of the Alien Kudzu currently trying to take over the planet, revealing that Sagara is its avatar. However, he still goes by his old name when dealing with others.
• Beaver from Leave It to Beaver got his nickname from his brother, Wally, not being able to pronounce "Theodore" [his given name].
• In Lois & Clark, Lois names him after the "S" insignia, which is supposed to be in an alien language.
• Once Upon a Time: In flashbacks shown in "The Evil Queen", Regina is at first offended at being called evil by her subjects, but by the end of the episode, embraces it after finding out pretty much everyone in the kingdom hates her.
  • Zelena's adoptive father insulted her as "wicked", and she made it her own.
• In QI, Stephen manages to "reclaim" the word 'charioteer' about 2 minutes after the panel suggest it should be a euphemism for gay. That's got to be some kind of record.
  Stephen: I'm a Charioteer of FIRE!
• Played for Laughs in Roger and the Rottentrolls. 1000 years ago, Merlin was attempting to create a ski resort for King Arthur, but his spell was ruined by some Norwegian trolls, causing the wizard to curse angrily, "Oh, those rotten trolls have messed it all up!" The trolls, too stupid to realise that Merlin was insulting them, assumed he was calling them by their name, and their descendants still refer to themselves as 'The Rottentrolls' to this day.
• On the self-titled sitcom Roseanne, one episode has her mother explaining that Jackie's name isn't really Jackie, but Marjorie. Roseanne couldn't properly pronounce her name as a child and it always sounded like she was calling her "My Jackie", and after a while, the name stuck.
• This is briefly inverted in one episode of Selfie, as Henry says to his assistant 'just call me Henry Potter' because he's a workplace wizard. He regrets this almost instantly, saying he'd dislike it immensely if people called him that. In another scene, Charmonique calls him Henry Potter to Eliza, saying that it spread like wildfire that morning.
• Silicon Valley: Jared's real name is Donald, not Jared. The name stuck when Gavin Belson misremembered his name as "Jared" and both he and the other employees were too scared of him to correct him. Even though he stopped working for Belson in the first episode of the series, he is pretty much always referred to as Jared by others over the course of the show.
• Several times on Smallville , as a Mythology Gag. When Clark Kent joins an underground fight club, the manager calls him "The Man Of Steel" because he earlier demonstrated he was bullet proof. Green Arrow called him "Boy Scout" because of his simple-minded idealism. When he becomes an active superhero, the media calls him "The Good Samaritan" (because he helps people in trouble for no reason), "The Red-Blue Blur" (named for the only thing visible when he uses Super-Speed), and finally, "The Blur". Also, when he reveals his secret to Jimmy Olsen, Jimmy goes, "Wow! You're some kind of Super... Super... Guy."
  • There was also "Clark Kent, the Man of Tomorrow" when he was running for high school president, though it was the other guy who photoshopped his face into what is basically superman's suit. There was also a time when Lana found him reading something by Friedrich Nietzsche and asked him if he was "Man, or Superman?", though he said he hadn't really decided. Also, he sometimes calls himself "Naman" in the early seasons, when interacting with people who know the local ancient legends about Kryptonians.
  • In the fandom, there is the "Unholy Cult of Chlois".
• While everybody on the other side in Stargate SG-1 initially calls him "shol'va" (traitor) as an insult (practically spitting out the curse), Teal'c pretty quickly warms up to the "title" and a few times even smiles proudly when being called that. Later on, the other rebel Jaffa treat the term the same way.
  • Happens in a season 8 episode "Affinity" where Teal'c moves into his own off-base apartment. A neighborhood teen puts Teal'c's forehead tattoo for being Apophis' first prime on his skateboard due to the teen admiring how great of an impact Teal'c had on him and the neighborhood.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Applies to Odo twice. Firstly, when he was discovered, he was a gelatinous blob that was not clearly a lifeform. He was kept in a flask with the label "unknown sample"; a loose Cardassian translation of this was Odo'ital, meaning "nothing". He eventually took on the shortened "Odo" as a form of identity. Secondly, he adopted the nickname "Constable" that was given to him by Kira as an appropriate if unusual title (for the time) for someone now working in station security.
  • His people are called "Changelings", originally used as a slur against them until they took it as their own.
• In Supernatural Castiel adopts Meg's nickname for him, "Clarence", as his alias when he becomes a human, but he does not understand the significance of the name.
• When Survivor contestant Rudy Boesch was in Navy basic training, his instructor kept mispronouncing his name (BOSH instead of BESH). Rudy wasn't foolish enough to dare correct him; he went along with it, and it eventually became the accepted pronounciation.
• One of the main characters in That '70s Show is a foreign exchange student with a very long and unpronounceable name, whom the gang nicknamed "Fez" (phonetic variant of FES, as in "foreign exchange student"). With time, he himself began using the nickname as his first name, to the point where in That '90s Show his business is named "Chez Fez".
• In the 2016 iteration of The Tick, "Ms. Lint", was originally an Embarrassing Nickname given to the Terror's number one by his other henchmen. A side effect of her electricity based power causes dust particles to become stuck to her clothing through static cling. The Terror himself counseled her to not let them get to her, and instead take it for herself and turn it into a name to be feared.
• Richard Hammond of Top Gear was nicknamed "Hamster" by Jeremy Clarkson and eventually came to like the name. He even refers to it with his production company, "Hamster's Wheel".
• WKRP in Cincinnati: Radio DJ Gordon Sims initially wanted his Stage Name to be Venus Rising, but due to a slip-up when he first came on the air, he was introduced as Venus Flytrap, and the name stuck.
• Wonder Woman (1975): From the pilot episode, "The New, Original Wonder Woman":
  Queen Hippolyte: Go in peace, my daughter. And remember that, in a world of ordinary mortals, you are a Wonder Woman.
  Princess Diana: I will make you proud of me... and of Wonder Woman.

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