Embarrassing Nickname

But they still had to use that as the comic book title, didn't they?

"The idea, as I understood it, was to give a kid a nickname appropriate to his appearance or eccentricity of behavior, the crueler the better. A kid with warts, for example, might be known as 'Toad' or 'Frog' or simply 'Warty'. In the course of time, the warts might vanish, but the nickname would remain, continuing its work of warping the kid's personality and kicking holes in his psyche. Nicknames were fun."

— Patrick McManus, "The Last Flight of Homer Pidgin"

It might be a nickname with a horribly embarrassing story behind it, or something family members or lovers use only when they're alone (in which case it overlaps with Affectionate Nickname). It will often reference a character's appearance or lack of ability in one area or another; sexual prowess (or endowment) is a common one. Because it is embarrassing it may be a Berserk Button for its recipient.

This is frequently a comedy trope, but not always; the backstory behind the nickname can also apply to a harrowing event from the character's past like a tragic mistake they made —they simply need to be ashamed of the nickname they are now burdened with.

Sub-Trope of In-Series Nickname. Appropriated Appellation is this trope defied. May overlap with Do Not Call Me "Paul". See also Accidental Misnaming, Atrocious Alias, Malicious Misnaming, Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!, Embarrassing First Name, Insistent Terminology, Named After the Injury, and Outgrowing the Childish Name.

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Examples:

Advertising

• One of the "switching to GEICO" radio ads has a tough biker guy informing the announcer that he thinks "Fuzzy Bunny" will be a good bikers' moniker for him from now on. The announcer then begins to protest that he really doesn't want to be called—
  Biker: Too late! The name's already stuck... Fuzzy!

Anime & Manga

• In Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day, a girl named Naruko Anjou is nicknamed "Anaru" as a child, a contraction and shuffling of her first and last names. As a teenager, she's incredibly embarrassed by it. Why, you ask? Remember, in Japanese, there's no difference between a "l" and a "r"...^note  It sounds like Anal, although it's actually pronounced "Ah-nah-rue."
• There are a couple of examples from the football manga Area no Kishi:
  • Protagonist Aizawa Kakeru is saddled with the nickname of "Mr. No Goal" due to his inability to effectively kick with his left leg, which makes him predictable for the opposing team's goalie.
  • The Handsome Lech Nakatsuka Kouta predictably earns the title "Mr. Sexual Harassment."
• Assassination Classroom:
  • At one point Class 3-E all decide that, as assassins, they should have codenames. Koro-sensei likes the idea and approves of it, but with a catch: no one is allowed to choose their own codename, the rest of the class does. End result is everyone winds up with embarrassing codenames and having to answer to them all day long. The worst off is Kayano, who gets a codename that pokes at her A-Cup Angst ("Forever Zero").
  • Class 3-E is fond of calling Irina Jelavić "Bitch-sensei", which annoys her. This starts out with them accidentally calling her "Jelabitch" (due the Japanese having problems with pronouncing "v"), but it turned into an Insult of Endearment once they grow to like her.
• In Assault Lily: Bouquet, Miriam Hildegard Von Gropius gets the nickname "Gropi"^note Yes, pronounced gropey from Moyu, which annoys her. When Moyu calls it cute at one point, Miriam responds that it's creepy.
• In Asteroid in Love, Moe Suzuya doesn't like that the customers of her family's bakery keeps calling her "MoeMoe", to the point she finds her first name equally embarrassing. As a results, she insists her schoolmates call her "Suzu".
• Attack on Titan features a scene where Pieck jokingly calls Porco "Pocco". Porco then reminds her that he'd told her never to call him that again.
• Bleach:
  • If a character meets Yachiru, they'll usually end up with an Embarrassing Nickname. Orihime is "Jiggles", Rangiku is "Boobs", Uryuu is "Pencil", and Ikkaku is "Pachinko-Head". Aramaki is variously called Maki-Maki or Whiskers, and doesn't like either.
  • Hitsugaya hates being called "Shirou-chan" by Hinamori, but has the grace not to retaliate with the nickname he used to give when they were younger, which was "Bedwetter Momo".
  • Mashiro calls Ichigo "Berry-tan".
• Nana Mizuha in Cahe Detective Club is named the "Demon Lord of Guttony" because of her Big Eater habits.
• Captain Tsubasa: Sanae Nakazawa was often called "Anego" (lit. "Big Sister", though it goes along the lines of "Gang Leader") by the rest of the cheerleading squad in the Nankatsu elementary school. Later as a teenager/young adult, some characters like Ishizaki and Hyuga call her that way to irk her.
• City Hunter:
  • Umibozu (a kind of sea monster) was supposed to have the codename 'Falcon', but Ryo nicknamed him Umibozu and it supplanted the nickname. As retaliation, Ryo was nicknamed 'The Stallion of Shinjuku' (it didn't stuck, and Ryo has a better sense of humor than Umi).
  • According to Ryo, the cop duo of Saeko and Hideyuki (former police officer) was known as 'The Beauty and the Beast of Tokyo Police' due their close partnership, great ability and looks.
  • Kasumi Asou alias Thief n°305 was nicknamed 'Flying Little Butt' by Ryo due what he first saw of her. When she reappeared, Ryo remembered the nickname first.
• Code Geass:
  • Early in the first season, Lelouch rescues his friend Suzaku by Geassing his captor Jeremiah Gottwald and mentioning something called "Orange"; according to him it's just a random word he threw out to make the Britannians think something deeper was going on. Indeed, loyal Britannians assume that "Orange" is code for some under-the-table deal Jeremiah had with Zero and start mockingly referring to Jeremiah as "Orange Boy", which drives him up the wall. In the second season we discover that he was fiercely loyal to Lelouch's mother Marianne and regretted that he wasn't able to prevent her assassination; when he confirms Lelouch's identity, Jeremiah pulls a Heel–Face Turn and embraces "Orange" as "the name of my loyalty!"
  • As for Lelouch, his friend Shirley calls him "Lulu", but he isn't really bothered or embarrassed by this. It may have something to do with his feelings for her.
• Daltanious: When Princess Catine enters the Adalus Base for the first time, she's surprised to see that Kento has a female companion with him, Sanae Shiratori. Threatened by the prospect of Kento loving someone else, she asks if Sanae is his "servant girl", making her angry. When Kento says that she isn't, Catine snidely remarks that she would have thought Sanae was his servant girl anyway because of how poor she looks.
• In The Demon Girl Next Door, Yuko initially doesn't like her demonic title as "Shadow Mistress" due to the connotations around the word 'mistress' (as in a Dominatrix, as Ryoko of all people implied). She comes to like it more when her teacher explains a mistress can just be a title of authority.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Masao Maeda’s bad reputation in being suspiciously perverted, by tailoring sexualized female slayer uniforms, earned him the nickname of "Scum Glasses" among the female slayers.
• Allen Walker in D.Gray-Man is, if you ask Kanda, named "Moyashi" ("Beansprout," in English). He does not appreciate this, and the nickname is one of the reasons Kanda is one of the only people in existence Allen can't get along with. Not that he cannot hit it back to Kanda by calling him by the first name.
• Yutaka Itazu in Eden of the East got his nickname of "Panties" due to him becoming a total recluse who walks around only in a shirt and underwear after losing his only pair of pants.
• In Eyeshield 21, Agon's nickname for Unsui is "Unko-chan", which can mean "Little Shit" or "Girly Little Un".
• Food Wars!:
  • Ikumi Mito dislikes her nickname "Nikumi" (a pun on "Niku", which means "Meat" in Japanese, and her given name) as this. She only allows Soma to call her that way because he told her it sounded cute, which made her develop a crush on him.
  • Hisako Arato is called "Hishoko-chan" (lit. "Secretary Girl") by Alice. It's used as a bit of a Running Gag in the manga, since the author hadn't given her a proper name until the Autumn Election, and it actually spread across the student body, much to her irritation. Unlike with Nikumi above, Soma agrees not to call her that way when she flips out about it.
• Played for Drama in Fullmetal Alchemist — Roy Mustang is known as "the Hero of Ishval" for his role in the Amestrian-Ishvallan war. He does not appreciate being called a hero for killing the most people in what was actually just a genocide.
• Fushigi Yuugi's Tamahome was called "Obake-chan"/"Little Ghost" in childhood thanks to the character on his forehead. When Tasuki figured that out and used it to refer to Tamahome, he got sent to orbit. No, really.
• In HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, Tsubomi is given the derogatory title "The Weakest Precure in History", due to the fact that, when she first transforms, she spent the entire moment just running and flailing.
• In I'm Gonna Be an Angel! Mikael totally hates when people misspell his name, calling him 'Kaeru-san' (Mr Frog) and he always tries to correct them. His teacher, Raphael on the other, doesn't seem to mind at all being called 'Haeru-san' (Mr Growing Out)
• Mikado from Kaguya-sama: Love Is War was respectfully granted the title "Boyfucker Mikado" due to him having crushed the dreams of countless opponents with his soccer skill.
  Mikado: (thinking) There's literally nothing respectful about that title!!
• Raimu Kouno of Kaiju Girl Caramelise was known as "Gorirairi" in middle school because her face resembled a gorilla's. She initially took the teasing in stride, but when she overheard Okada (the boy she liked) making fun of her face she became much more sensitive about it. In the present, she has shortened it to "Rairi".
• One minor character in Kyō Kara Ore Wa!! got the nickname of "Perizoma Mask" due to an unluckily placed bandage he received as part of Mitsuhashi's realization he could stand up to bullies (not that Mitsuhashi remembers how he realized that or that he ruined Perizoma Mask's life).
• Alto Saotome from Macross Frontier does not appreciate being called "Princess Alto" ("Alto-hime" in the original Japanese), a nickname that derives from his effeminate appearance. The fact he was a kabuki actor who played female roles and just so happens to have a Strong Family Resemblance to his deceased mother does not help his case.
• Earning one is what inspires Masamune-kun's Revenge. Aki is well-known for giving these to her suitors as a way of rejecting them. As a child, he was called "Pig's Foot" when he tries to confess to Aki (he was chubby as a child), and decided to dedicate his life to getting in shape so he can make Aki fall in love with him, just so he can reject her.
• Haruki Shiina of Mr. Right Turned Out to Be a Younger Woman!? is often referred to as being like an old man, in large part because she loves alcohol. Usually, she tolerates this, but one time, when the nickname gets to her, Risa Takagai speaks up and calls out her coworkers on how they're upsetting Shiina.
• In My Hero Academia, Present Mic calls Aizawa “Prince of slumberland” and “snooze master” due to his sleeping a lot. Aizawa puts him in a chokehold til he shuts up.
• Jiraiya from Naruto is at first annoyed when Naruto calls him Ero-sennin ("Pervy Sage" in the English dub), but almost immediately thereafter, allows him to do it when they are alone. But he still gets annoyed when Naruto does it in front of others.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • The K in Evangeline A.K. McDowell's name stands for Katherine, but Albireo Imma shortens it to "Kitty". She doesn't like it at all. In the sequel UQ Holder!, this is actually used to show how dangerous Dana is since she calls her Kitty and she doesn't get angry. Quite the opposite, actually. The only person who was ever given permission to call her that was her adopted son Touta (although there was time travel shenanigans involved).
  • And Rakan refers to her by the even more embarrassing Loli Grandma. Her next spell comes close to "accidentally" killing him.
• In A Place Further than the Universe, Shirase Kobuchizawa is nicknamed "Antarctica" at her school because of how obsessed she is to reach the eponymous continent in order to search for her Missing Mom.
• Dawn in Pokémon hates to be called "Dee Dee", a reference to an unfortunate childhood incident with a Plusle & Minun. Once we find this out, Kenny looks less playful and more cruel, both by the fact that he hung the Embarrassing Nickname on her in the first place, and that he keeps using it. Under her original Japanese name, Hikari, the nickname was "Pikari" because of how the shock made her hair sparkle. But in the dub, she's called "Dee Dee" because the sparkles looked like "Diamond Dandruff".
• In Saki Shinohayu -dawn of age-, Kousuke, Shino's uncle, hates it when a pawn shop clerk calls him "Richardson," since he's no longer in that band.
• Miki from School-Live! doesn't really like Yuki referring to her as "Mii-kun".
• It's part of the series title, but Barnaby really doesn't like being referred to as "Bunny"/"L'il Bunny"/"Bunny-chan" by his crime-fighting partner Kotetsu in Tiger & Bunny. He eventually chooses to give up on complaining about it but he never accepts it completely. Its embarrassingness is so extreme it can apparently restore Barnaby's memories of Kotetsu after they'd been forcibly wiped by the series Big Bad via a NEXT power Hilariously, though, it seems the name has caught on, enough for the mechanic who maintains Barnaby's hi-tech suit to add a rabbit-shaped logo onto it.
• In Transformers: Energon, the Alpha Quintesson is called "Alpha Q" for short. Say it out loud a few times...
• For an Older Than They Look teenage girl with rather significant Height Angst issues, Saku Momoi of Wasteful Days of High School Girls certainly dislikes being called Loli. The manga expands on this by showing her annoyance at Baka calling her that, but after everybody started addressing her that way, she quietly accepted it in resignation.
• Natsumi in You're Under Arrest! is nicknamed "Home Run Girl" by local masked vigilante Strike Man (since she's the only person capable of hitting his pitches with a baseball bat), and she hates it. It gets worse in later seasons, when the local newspapers have picked up the nickname as well, much to her chagrin.
• In Zoids: New Century Bit Cloud starts calling the Tigers/Saberfangs Team "Fuzzy Pandas". Somehow, the nickname sticks whenever Bit and the Blitz Team run into them, and the team itself goes on an emotional roller coaster ride best described as comic relief for the rest of the series. Towards the end, the Saberfangs face off one more time against two members of Blitz Team...and the Judge Bot refers to the Saberfangs as the "Fuzzy Pandas Team". All the Saberfang Zoids Face Fault as one and are KO'd as a result.
• Zombie Land Saga: Saki calls Lily "Chinchiku" (translated as "Shrimpy" or "Squirt" in the dub).

Asian Animation

• BoBoiBoy has Adu Du's nickname Bubucu, given by his mother. In a way, it means "Stinky".
• Wolffy of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf got the nickname "Niao Tai Lung" ("Pee Wolf"; this is a pun on his original Chinese name, Hui Tai Lung), for the bad habit of wetting the bed as a cub.

Comedy

• Greg Davies (of The Inbetweeners fame) has a routine where he introduces a flipchart introducing the many, many such nicknames one of his schoolmates had, and all the childishly minor incidents that each one immortalised.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • The Penguin's nom de guerre also began as an insult. He was teased as a child because he was fat, short, and had a big nose, not to mention that his mother insisted he always carry an umbrella, because his father died of pneumonia after being caught in the rain without one. "Penguin" was a common insult. After his mother died and her long illness cost him so much that the bank foreclosed on their store, he tried to turn to crime, only to be laughed at by a gang of thugs who used the same insult. Fed up with it all, he decided to embrace the insult; he dressed like a penguin, customized his ever-present umbrella into a high-caliber firearm, went back to the gang, gunned down their leader, and took over, completing his Start of Darkness.
  • Robin III/Red Robin Tim Drake despises the nickname "Timmy" though he still gets called by it from time to time.
• Captain Marvel: Captain Mar-Vell would often insist he is called by his actual name and not "Captain Marvel". (Despite the fact that it was the title of his own comic.)
• On arrival in Copperhead Zeke immediately trips over Budroxifinicus' name and Clara dubs him "Boo". Boo is not amused but can't directly oppose his new boss.
• The name "Doctor Octopus" was actually originally a derogatory name that Otto Octavius' co-workers called him behind his back, a pun on his actual name inspired by the four-armed apparatus; he knew about it, but barely cared. After the accident that bonded the invention to him and granted him mental control over it, he adapted the insult as his nom de guerre as a way of showing contempt towards them.
• In Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja , Dr. Yagyu calls John "Peachy", after Momotaro the Peach Boy. John himself teases the Soviet Colonel Novikova by calling her "Novi-cakes."
• A conversation in War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle reveals that the protagonist thought of calling himself by the titular name, but after realizing war isn't fun and games, he grew to consider it this. By the time he reveals it to his dying comrade, he buries his face in his hands from sheer embarassment that he at one point thought it was a good idea.
• Teddy of Plutona earned the name "Tugger Teddy" when he was caught masturbating in the school bathroom.
• A mutant named Hachiman was sent after the Geraci crime family at the time when The Punisher became their don. Because he uses an axe alongside with his mutant powers, he has gained the nickname "Hatchetman", which he resents.
• She-Hulk is usually flattered by people who call her The Jade Giantess or The Glorious Green Glamazon. However, calling her "Shulkie" is a good way to get a fat lip (or worse).
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • Played with a bit: Sonic, Knuckles and the Chaotix are introduced to Knux's baby brother. However, once they realize that the kid's gonna be nicknamed "Kneecaps", it's Knuckles who flips out after Sonic and the Chaotix (including Knuckles' girlfriend) burst out laughing.
  • In the All There in the Manual "The Complete Sonic Comic Encyclopedia", it reveals that the Acorn lineage had nicknames for its kings. Of them, three of them had nicknames connected to bad choices. Those were Theodore the Bereaved (he lost his first son due to an accidental shooting), George the Foolish (nearly eradicated his own army in a foolish attack) and Maximilian the Cursed (getting hit with bad moments after bad moments after Robotnik exiled him in his coup.)
• Spider-Man: Eugene Thompson's nickname "Flash" was changed into one in one of the sillier retcons during Brand New Day. Originally it had been used in reference to his prowess on the football field, now it became a reference to a case of premature ejaculation on a high-school date.
• Deliberately invoked in Strikeforce: Morituri by Pilar "Scaredycat" Lisieux and William "Scatterbrain" Deguchi; they gave each other embarrassing code names as part of a dare.
• Superman:
  • Daily Planet editor Perry White really hates being called "Chief".
  • Supergirl hates when her mother calls her "Karanizu", feeling she's too old for pet names.
• Matt Murdock intensely disliked being called "Daredevil" as a child (he was perceived as a bookworm by his classmates, and they called him that to be sarcastic), but through the logic of comicbooks chose to call himself just that after gaining superpowers...
• Transmetropolitan:
  • A version of the McGregor story told in the "Folklore" section below occurs in an Issue #14. A rather sad-looking guide talks about all the things he helped to build inside a building...and then someone calls out, "Hey! Bill Chimpfucker!"
  • Then there's the first President seen in the series: known only as "The Beast" (as in we never learn his real name unlike his successor, Gary "The Smiler" Callahan). The name was given by Spider Jerusalem as an apt description of his attitude, and it apparently stuck too well, as the man himself laments: "Because of you, everyone calls me 'The Beast' now. The press, my staff, my own fucking children."
• In Uncanny Avengers, Daken tells Sunfire that in Japan he's seen as an embarrassment and they gave him an appropriate nickname, "Hot Sake". This is particularly insulting because only low quality Sake is served hot; the heat helps conceal the flaws.
• X-Men:
  • X-Man Fabio Medina got saddled with the nickname "Goldballs" due to his power to create the same. He begged his teammates to stop using it or it'd stick. He eventually claimed it as his X-Men codename.
  • X-Men villain Apocalypse was often referred to by fans as 'Pookie' due to his tendency to not come off nearly as intimidating as he used to. Several years ago this became canon when Deadpool began calling him this, and it soon caught on among other characters in-universe. Needless to say, the immortal world-conquering mutant overlord was not amused by this.
• In one of the X-Wing Rogue Squadron comics, we see that Wedge Antilles' childhood nickname was Veggies. He doesn't seem to mind◊ when his childhood friend Mirax calls him that, although she tells him not to use her childhood nickname, Myra.

Comic Strips

• For Better or for Worse: As kids, Michael used to refer his sister Elizabeth as 'Lizard Breath'. He would sometimes do it as an adult when he wanted to annoy her.
• Jon Arbuckle's brother "Doc Boy"^note DON'T CALL ME DOC BOY!!! in Garfield. He does, however, prefer that to "Iguana Gums", another nickname he used to have.
• In Peanuts, Sally's nickname for Linus was "Sweet Babboo"... and he didn't like it one bit.
• In Retail, Cooper frequently refers to his boss, Stuart, as "Zucchini Head".

Fan Works

• In Absolute Power Sucks Absolutely, Maxime, also known as the "Miracle Man" and "Deus Ex", hates it when his surrogate little brother Alvaro won't call him anything but "Jesus" despite pleading with him not to. It's a reminder of how people won't stop worshiping him no matter how much he tells them to stop.
• Absolute Trust:
  • In Chapter 16, Alec cuts off Zhao's hand to free Tui. A traumatized member of Zhao's personal guard escapes the North Pole alive, and when Ozai receives the report, he places a bounty on Alec's head, along with the nickname "Hand Slicer." And any hope of escaping it dies when he does it to another evil firebender in Chapter 21.
  • Alec gets hit with this twice, actually; thanks to Pakku, his Code Name among the Order of the White Lotus is Foul Mouth.
• A Certain Droll Hivemind: From "Entry 16": "Sumi", for "Koizumi Kyoko":
  "Oh, lay off her," Abe Eiko said. "It's too early in the morning for this, Sumi."
  "... don't call me Sumi."
• Played for Drama in Achilles' Heel. Lusamine has a breakdown when her estranged husband Mohn calls her by her old pet name, "Lucy".
• In Almost Psycho Chuck Chicken Buford hates being called "Bufy" by Butternut and Howie.
• Tim Drake, after surrendering the Robin mantle to Damian Wayne sometime between Angel of the Bat and Times of Heresy has been using "Red Robin" as a Permanent Placeholder ever since. By his own admission, he hates the title, and Connor Hawke and Stephanie Brown both lovingly crack jokes about him sharing his title with a burger restaurant.
• In the Transformers/My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic crossover Applebloom: Transform and Roll Out!, Applebloom reveals that Scootaloo's mother calls her "her little pumpkin-doodlebug" while trying to convince Scootaloo that she's really Applebloom (Applebloom having just found out she's a Shapeshifting Robot Girl).
• In The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan:
  • Luna hates it when Celestia calls her "Lulu," as she finds it childish.
  • Twilight hates when her father calls her by her old baby nickname "Twinklesparky," especially when he does it in front of Nova Shine.
• Discussed in Arthur Goes Fourth. Beat finds Brain's nickname silly and questions why he allows people to call him it.
• In The Beast Of Gusu, Wei Wuxian considers the titular nickname (given by the Wen soldiers) this.
• In the short Beyond the Impossible, Pilot Jorge Strauss got his nickname "Dropper" because he accidentally dropped his weapons shortly after take-off in a training flight in his A-10 Warthog, while trying to retract his landing gear.
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series has Socrates refer to Stupendous Man as "Stupey".
• Cycles Upon Cycles: "Shepard's Strikers," the name that the media gives Shepard's crew in this Mass Effect / StarCraft crossover. Shepard himself doesn't care for it and Emperor Valerian is dubious, though everyone else seems to like it.
• The Dance is Not Over:
  • The castellan of Harrenhal is The Ghost, but gets the unflattering nickname "Let's Surrender" after being forced to surrender the castle seven times throughout the civil war.
  • One of the less popular Greyjoy captains is known as "Kenning the coward" to his fellow reavers.
• In The Devil Is a Part-Timer Abridged, at the end of the fight against Lucifer, Satan demotes him to "Lucy".
• Distortions (Symphogear): Chris and Tsubasa are given nicknames of Megadeth (after the common theme of her attacks) and Samurai (due to acting similarly to one), respectively, by the American Soldiers that they end up saving. Neither of them are pleased by this development.
• Encanto fanfics:
  • Ignacio from The Dragon and the Butterfly has a habit of giving these, referring to Julieta Madrigal as "Cooking Mama."
  • In Storytime, it's mentioned that Pepa sometimes calls Bruno "Pancita" (a Spanish word more-or-less meaning "chubby belly"), which Sierra has picked up on.
• In Faith No More, Faith refers to her Watcher, Diana Dormer, as DD. More than once, a character has noted her nickname doesn't refer to her initials.
• In Frozen Hearts (Sakume), Heinrik, one of Hans' brothers, has the nickname, "Heinie," while Johan Jorgen, a pirate, has the nickname "Jo-Jo". The latter responds to the former calling him by his nickname by threatening to respond in kind.
• A Game of Cat and Cat:
  • Aoi makes it a policy to never give her name out to anyone because she's a gang leader. This backfires on her when she tells the English-speaking Back-Alley Doctor her name under anesthesia, and he mistakes it for the childish expression of pain "owie". Ever since then he only called her "Madame Pain", though he only tells its origin to her. Everyone else assumes it's because she's using a whip.
  • As revenge for that nickname, Aoi starts calling the doctor "Doctor Dude". She then has to clarify to others that his real name is neither Jeffrey nor Lebowski. Unlike Aoi, Doctor Dude's real name is never stated.
• Poison Ivy from Green's My Favorite Color hates when Harley calls her "Ives". She's also not fond of just "Ivy". As a result, Harley's preferred Affectionate Nickname is "Red".
• How Friendship Accidentally Saved Magical Britain: Tom Riddle's new surname Gaunt-Prewett is initially abbreviated to "GP", which gets immediately rendered by the other Slytherins (and eventually Hermione) into "Yippee". Tom, naturally, hates it, but he comes to own it anyway.
• In One Punch Man: Hero's Harem, Vaccine Girl (a weakened Gender Flip of Vaccine Man) is given the name Roly Poly Vore Girl by the Heroes Association after she eats a monster made of pollution and balloons to hilarious proportions.
• In An Ideal Gift, Mikey has taken to calling Irrilia "Rilly." While Irrilia doesn't seem to mind, her father does.
  Raphael: Don't call her Rilly.
• Jaune in In the Kingdom's Service is given the code name Rat after becoming a member of the Vale Secret Service.
• Innocent (MarauderLover7): Harry is displeased that toddler Sasha calls him "Ree", because that's also what she calls Kreacher, and he doesn't like the idea of being interchangeable with Kreacher. Then he learns that Sirius, aka Padfoot, is "Poo", and decides it could be worse.
• In the Saki doujin, Joint Training Camp, Himeko Tsuruta gets annoyed at Awai calling her "Tsuru-hime", a reference to her name and her Combination Attack with her best friend and Club President Mairu. After telling Awai to stop, Himeko reluctantly accepts Awai calling her "Himeko".
• Little Hands, Big Attitude: Defied. When trying to decide on a name for the new baby in the family, Sonic immediately vetoes "Richard" because he knows from watching Batman movies that it leads to embarrassing nicknames - in other words he doesn't want anyone to call his newest little brother "Dick".
• The Ludwig Quartet: Invoked by Elliot Koopa on Ludwig, mocking him with Toothwig.
• Luz Belos: Princess of the Boiling Isles:
  • Much like in canon, Amity can't abide being called "Mittens", even by Luz.
  • When they were little, Luz would call Willow "Willy."
• In the Punch-Out!! fanfic Ma Fille, Glass Joe's high school "friends" often called him Lulu, since his middle name is Luc.
• In Magical Gentlewoman Phantom Thief Joker-chan, Akira calls Ryuji Saka-chan, much to his embarrassment. After numerous attempts to make her stop, he eventually accepts it with resignation, which causes a few students to think they're dating... and that she has him whipped.
• In My Family and Other Equestrians, the protagonist is given the nickname of Bones by his father, which he obviously hates. Soon, even Princess Celestia is using this nickname to mock him.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan fiction Our True Colors, Pinkie Pie gives Scootaloo the nickname "Loo-Loo". Scootaloo is not amused.
• In Naturally Fleamont Potter complains to his parents about the number of times he's been called "Flea". When his brother Charlus ribs him about it, their father comments that Charlus used to be called "Lusty" at Hogwarts.
• In Numberjacks Advanced, Charlotte dislikes being called Lottie. Exactly why is unknown, but she will voice her displeasure when she hears someone say it.
• Oni Ga Shiku Series: Izuku calls Ochako "Ass-Slapper" for a short while - a very short while - because she accidentaly slapped his butt when she used her quirk on him to save him from tripping (as it requires physical contact). She protests a lot against it so Izuku quickly switches to Occhan, which she has no problem with.
• In Pacific: World War II U.S. Navy Shipgirls, Phoenix has the really funny-sounding nickname of "Phoo-bird", something she doesn't like being called in public.
• Paper Mario X: Meta Knight does not like to be called Mettie.
• In Paradise, because of Celestia's heroic act of jumping down the mountain ridge to save a pegasus foal without any wings, the pegasi started to call her 'Pink Plummet'. Celestia didn't like that one bit. Though, she later used that nickname to bruise the pegasi's pride for not stepping up to the challenge of being chased by her.
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Common among the original Bearers.
  • Fluttershy does not like her time-given title of "Stern Warden", because it makes her seem scarier than she really was.
  • Pinkie doesn't seem too pleased with her title of "Wise Oracle" either.
  • Applejack is annoyed at being referred to as a "Stallion" of Dedication, explaining she got stuck with the name due to ponies mixing her up with her brother.
  • Rarity doesn't care for her identity being more used to inspire elitism, but is somewhat appeased by the fact that at least there's still some effort towards honoring the values of her element.
  • Rainbow Dash doesn't like her title as the Warrior because she doesn't feel she earned it in life.
  • Averted by Twilight, who hasn't really had the opportunity to consider her title of "Magi of Stars".
  • In the sequel Picking Up the Pieces, Gentle Step says that her lieutenant, a stallion named Mist Flight, hates being called "Misty". Vix-Lei's "embarrassing codename" of Bad Driver also qualifies.
• In one comic from Persona 5 Adult Confidant AU, Sojiro gives his classmate/teammate Iwai the nickname 'Mune-chan' (a shortened version of his given name Munehisa). When Iwai tells Sojiro not to call him that again, Sadayo and Ichiko arrive and greet him as 'Mune-san' and 'Mune-chan' respectively, with Sojiro admitting he told a few people.
• A Piece in the Game of Gods: From the second chapter:
  "Hey, Jerry," Teri greeted me in a somewhat friendlier tone.
  "Hey, Teapot," I responded with a nod of acknowledgement.
  Teri gave me a look of annoyance at the old nickname and even flipped me off, but didn't say anything. The first time I'd ever met Teri, she'd been practicing her routine for a school play and had been singing, "I'm a little teapot," over and over, hence my own personal nickname for her. I didn't use it very often, just enough to provide the occasional annoyance.
• PMD: Another Perspective: Early on, Blazy comes up with "Purry" as a nickname for the Rocket grunt. While mentions of the nickname initially prompt her to react with hostility, she decides to go by it to attract less attention.
• Pittan from Pretty Cure Perfume Preppy hates to be called "Pit".
• Prison Island Break: Knuckles is nicknamed "Fuckles" (though no one other than Shadow says that to his face) while Silver is nicknamed "Preacher".
• In the Harry Potter/Dragonriders of Pern crossover The Queen Who Fell to Earth the dragons like to give non-riders descriptive nicknames. Until she became a rider, Hermione's nickname was "Fuzzy One," while Sirius' is "Smelly Dog."
• In A Quincy's Fairy Tail, Nanana Najahkoop hates being called "Nananana Batman" with a passion. Obviously, nearly everyone calls him that, much to his chagrin
• Quizzical: Stone the Drone, for the titular Quizzical Greystone, who dislikes her monotone voice.
• In Repairs, Retrofits and Upgrades, a The Legend of Korra fanfiction, Asami is dubbed "noodles" by Iroh due to an odd metaphor regarding the development of international relations and technology, and her place in it.
• The Rigel Black Chronicles: Members of the "Save Our World" party pronounce SOW like sowing seeds. Its detractors, though, pronounce it like a female pig. (It doesn't help that the previous incarnation was named "Cure Our World".) Hermione doesn't actually realise that the pronunciation is intended as an insult until Archie explains it to her.
• Rise of the Minisukas: Sakura Suzuhara calls her guardian Minisuka "Crimson Septuple Hypermax". Leader and Shiki find it hilarious... until Sakura christen them "Scarlet Sistine Superczar" and "Burgundy Buccaneer Blastcaster".
• RWBY: ABRG: Glynda Goodwitch is often called by the unfortunate name Goodbitch. Mostly by her boss, Headmaster Ozpin, who loves to get her riled up for... personal reasons.
• SAO: The Eroge: Kirito learns from Ducker that his constant traveling with only Asuna, Argo, and Kizmel has resulted in him gaining the moniker of 'The Ladies' Man Swordsman'.
• In Say It Thrice, Lydia discovers that, because of the events of the movie, she's known by various ghosts as "The Mortal Bride." She doesn't like it, although by the end of the story she's willing to make use of the implied threat it carries.
• The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Jo Baker's exposure to GC-161 gives her Super-Strength but turns her skin blue, so she calls herself Azure Crush. Her boyfriend, however, affectionately calls her Smurfette. (No-one else is allowed to call her that.)
• Shadowchasers Series: Jalal the Dragonborn is nicknamed "Jalal the Dragonblind" after a Noodle Incident where he mistook the female minotaur Terra Ironhoof for male and got beaten up for it.
• Shinji the Casanova: Shinji's friends start calling him "Lord Iron Balls" after seeing him teasing and even flirting with Asuka without dire consequences. Eventualy, Shinji's whole class join them. Shinji does not appreciate it.
  Cupid: "'Lord Iron Balls', eh? Should we put that on your locker-tag?"
  Shinji: "Oh shut up!"
• In the Miraculous Ladybug story A Small but Stubborn Fire, Marinette got a public nickname, Pajama Girl, due to her being seen in her pajamas with Adrien.
• In Souls Abound a goblin who soiled himself during a dragon handling class becomes known as "Crappy".
• Son of the Sannin:
  • Shikamaru earns the nickname "Pineapple Head", of which he's not very fond of, although Temari uses it with some shades of endearment.
  • Earlier in the story, due to the changes in the ninja academy's training program, Sakura goes from the first student in the class to the dead last, to the point every other female student (even Hinata) is able to beat her in physical combat. Ino then switches from calling her "Forehead Girl" to "The Pink Punching Bag".
• Sword Art Online Abridged:
  • Klein had the misfortune of getting stuck in the titular game while playing his test character, whom he named "BallsDeep69." He's had to correct people about his name so often that his guildmates think "My name is Klein!" is how he says hello, while Kirito (usually) calls him "Balls" or "Ballsy."
  • Defied by Agil, who goes by "Tiffany" in this story but doesn't seem the least bit embarrassed by it, and it's the only point against him qualifying as the Only Sane Man in the game. No explanation has been offered for his choice of online handle, so it's unknown whether he got saddled with it because he logged in under his wife's account, or he chose it because it amused him.
• True Potential: Anko's nicknames for her genin are "Whiskers" (Naruto), "Stutters-Chan" (Hinata), and "Lazy Ass" (Shikamaru).
• Viridian: The Green Guide: Katsuki has no issue with Izuku calling him "Kacchan", but he does have an issue when Stain discovers the nickname, finds it adorable, and decides to tell it to everyone in the underground. Including Villains, Underground Heroes, and the police. And then they start to use it as Katsuki's handle. Katsuki is completely miffed.
• Wishing Well: Baby Tiger Lily hates being called "Baby" because she's nearing the point where she gets her adult Meaningful Rename. Her brother offers to call her "BLT", but that's equally embarrassing.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: Marik from the Abridged Series calls Bakura either "Fluffy", "Florence", or on one occasion "Kitty".

Film — Animation

• Coco: While trying to sneak into Ernesto's house, a few musicians address Héctor by his embarrassing nickname, "Chorizo", because he died choking on one in 1921. Héctor clarifies it was food poisoning from the chorizo. This moment gets harder to look at since it was revealed that Ernesto poisoned Héctor's tequila and when Héctor was about to die from said poisoning, Ernesto mockingly claims it might've been the chorizos he had.
• In The Little Mermaid, Ariel likes calling Flounder a "guppy" when he gets scared.
• In Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, Max hates it when Goofy calls him "Maxie" because it's childish and he's trying to make a good impression on his girlfriend Mona.
• In Strange Magic, a love potioned Dawn calls The Bog King "Boggy Woggy Kingy Wingy", much to his frustration.
• In Turning Red, Mei comes to dislike her nickname of "Mei-Mei" as she associates it with the unrealistic image her mother has of her.

Film — Live-Action

• "Uneven Steven" in 2:37. He walks with a limp.
• In Alien³, Aaron is called "85" by the inmates. It refers to his IQ score, which they found out when they took a look at his personnel file.
• Buford 'Mad Dog' Tannen from Back to the Future Part III. In fact, calling him 'Mad Dog' is a Berserk Button with him.
• Bandslam: "Dewey" for Will, and it is not Played for Laughs. It's because his dad killed a kid while driving while intoxicated-DWI, Dewie.
• In Basic Instinct, Nick is called "Shooter" by a lot of people. It refers to a previous incident in which he accidentally shot and killed a bunch of tourists, which he is still haunted by.
• Baywatch (2017): After an incident where Matt Brody vomited into the pool in the middle of a swim race, Matt was nicknamed "Vomit Comet".
• In Beyond the Lights, the media dubs Kaz "Officer Hero" after he saves Noni- which his fellow policemen are quick to affectionately tease him with (at one point even filling the trunk of his squad car with copies of a recent issue of Vibe magazine that Noni happens to be gracing the cover of).
• In Big Game, Morris keeps on calling Oskari "Small Shoes", much to boy's displeasure, as small footprints are the first thing he notices about him while tracking him.
• In Black Patch, most of the town call Carl 'Flytrap' because one of his jobs is swatting flies in the hotel lobby.
• The Blind Side: Both in the film and in Real Life, Michael Oher hates being called "Big Mike", because he originally wanted to be a basketball star and basketball stars aren't supposed to be that big.
• In Bugsy, the title character hates being called Bugsy, which refers to his temper. The Real Life Bugsy Siegel did not like the name either.
• Marty Huggins in The Campaign has the nickname "Tickleshits". Apparently, he once shat himself while being tickled.
• In Captain America: Civil War, Iron Man calls in his secret weapon, Spider-Man, by calling him "Underoos." In the Japanese version, this is changed to "Leotard-kun".
• Clerks II features a character named Lance Dowds, played by Jason Lee, who acquired the nickname "Picklefucker" after a dare involving holding a pickle between his buttocks. Randall is more than happy to remind him in front of the entire restaurant.
• Doctor... Series:
  • Sir Lancelot Spratt was called "Porker" during his childhood:
    Iris: What would you like me to call you? Just plain "Lancelot" or have you got some sort of a nickname?
    Sir Lancelot: Well as a matter of fact I have, but it hasn't been used since I was at school.
    Iris: May I share the secret?
    Sir Lancelot: Well, it's... "Porker".
    Iris: Yes, well, little boys can be very unkind. (Beat) And observant, too.
  • Miss Rubikov from Doctor in Clover refuses to be called "Tatty":
    Sydney: Now, now, don't excite yourself, Tatty.
    Miss Rubikov: An' don't call me "Tatty"! Me name's Tatiana!
  • Doctor in Trouble:
    • Captain Spratt doesn't like when Wendover calls him "Whiskers".
    • When the Master-at-Arms (whose first name is Humphrey) tells Dr. Burke (in disguise as Lavinia) to call him "Hum" for short, Dr. Burke remarks it's a good thing his name isn't "Bumfrey", as that would be "Bum" for short.
• In Drive a Crooked Road, Eddie's Jerkass workmate Phil only ever addresses him as 'Shorty', which Eddie hates.
• The Enforcer (1951): Big Babe is short for big baby, a nickname Lazick got for being an overweight Dirty Coward.
• Full Metal Jacket: One member of Lusthog Squad is called "Handjob", due to masturbating at least ten times a day.
• Gang of Roses: When one of the gang members calls Malone 'Babyface', Chas giggles. Malone heads off muttering something about it being a name from childhood that stuck.
• In Hero and the Terror, Chuck Norris' character is lauded as "Hero" by the press for catching the Serial Killer known as "The Terror". He hates the nickname because he only caught the Terror through dumb luck after nearly getting himself killed and still suffers from post-traumatic stress.
• In Hot Fuzz, "Cousin Sissy" is revealed by Angel to be one for Simon Skinner, though it turns out Everybody Knew Already.
• Inverted in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; Indiana Jones, aka Henry Jones Jr., hates being called "Junior" by his father, Henry Jones Sr. His father, in turn, can't understand why his son likes being nicknamed after the family dog.
• In Inglourious Basterds, Smithson Utivitch was rather disappointed to learn that the while the Nazis know his squadmates as Aldo the Apache and the Bear Jew, he is known as "The Little Man" amongst his enemies.
• Olsen-banden: When the titular protagonist got an Adaptational Name Change in Jönssonligan, he also received one of these. Specifically, Charles-Ingvar tends to get called "Sickan"^note For context, this is actually his twin sister's name which became his nickname as well after a mix-up in school by his closest friends, which he complains about at least twice an episode.
• In Men in Black 3, the main villain Boris instantly gets pissed off if he is called "Boris the Animal".
  Boris: It's. Just. Boris!
• In Midnight Cowboy, Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo hates being called "Ratso" and wants to be called "Rico" instead. We can only guess how he would feel about the fact that a Muppet rat is named "Rizzo" after him.
• In Molly's Game, Molly hates being called "Poker Princess": a nickname the tabloids gave her.
• In More Dead Than Alive, Cain does not like his old nickname of "Killer" Cain as he is attempting to go straight, put the past behind him and make a new start. But he is forced to use it to earn a living while appearing in Ruffalo's Shooting Show & Death Display.
• In Notting Hill, when William Thacker takes his new girlfriend, film mega-star Anna Scott, to a dinner party with some of his friends, the friends make sure that Scott knows that William's nickname in college was "Floppy", and that the situation was not pretty.
• "Babyface" Nelson in O Brother, Where Art Thou? hates being called Babyface, as the real man did.
• Please Turn Over: Roger in Naked Revolt has "Rogey-Podgy":
  Stella: I know, poor Rogey-Podgy.
  Roger: Don't say that. Rogey, not podgy. I'm fit!
• In cut scenes of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Luke is called "Wormy" by his friends on Tatooine. You can see why he dropped it later.
• Stuber takes its title from the dumb nickname Stu receives from his boss at the sporting goods store, which combines Stu's name with that of the other company Stu works for, Uber.
• In the Norwegian film Turn Me On, Dammit, Artur pokes Alma in the leg with his erect penis, earning her the nickname "Pikk-Alma" ("Dick-Alma").
• In Watch Your Stern, Chief Mundy is called the "Creeper" by Blissworth.
• We're the Millers: Boner Garage (although she doesn't think it's embarrassing).
• In The World's End, Oliver Chamberlain earned the nickname "O-Man" due to his birthmark being shaped like a 6. He got so annoyed that, as an adult, he had it removed via laser surgery. When Oliver is replaced by a blank, which uses an unaltered copy of his DNA, he is spotted due to the mark returning.

Jokes

• A young man is walking through a small village one day and decides to stop by a bar and have a beer. He walks into a bar, and sees a grizzled old man, crying into his beer. Curious, the young man sits down and says, "Hey old timer, why the long face?" The old man looks at him and points out the window, "See that dock out there? I built that dock with my own two hands, plank by plank, nail by nail, but do they call me McGregor the dockbuilder? No, no." The old man continued, "And see that ship out there? I've been fishing these waters for my village for 35 years! But do they call me McGregor the fisherman? No, no." The old man continued, "And see all the crops in the farms out there? I planted and have been farming those crops for my village for nearly 45 years! But do they call me McGregor the farmer? No, no." The old man starts to cry again, "But you screw one goat..."

Literature

Authors:

• In the stories of P. G. Wodehouse, many members of the Drones Club have nicknames of this sort. In some cases, however, the real names they have replaced are even worse.
  • In the Blandings Castle novel Heavy Weather, Lord Tilbury is annoyed when Galahad Threepwood, who knew him in his youth, calls him on his old nickname, "Stinker".

Works:

• In The Adventures of Pinocchio, Gepetto is also known as "Polentina" (because his Dodgy Toupee makes him look like he's wearing a plate of polenta, a sort of cornmeal pudding, on his head). He really doesn't like that name.
• In Anansi Boys, friends and family keep calling the main character "Fat Charlie", even after he's lost weight. But that can happen when your father is a Trickster god who sang the world into existence. His nicknames tend to stick.
• Two of the characters in Armadillo Fists really don't like their street names.
  • Mr Face really doesn't like being called "Rape Face". Everyone does it anyway, though, even the narration. To make it even worse, he's never actually been known to rape anyone. ^note To be clear, he's certainly evil enough to do it, but if so he does it in the utmost secret. He just permanently looks like he's about to.
  • Tony doesn't like being called "Mr Torso". He feels he should more accurately be called "Mr Awesome", or even better, "Mr Fast Awesome".
• The titular Artemis Fowl hates being called "Artie". He allows his mother and Juliet to call him that. And later on, Holly calls him by it, which causes him some confusion.
• In The Baby-Sitters Club, there is Boontsie (Stacey), Sunshine (Dawn) and Shannie (Shannon).
• In Ben-To, the noms de guerre that the 'wolves' are stuck with are more often than not one of these, bestowed unto them by their peers. For example, protagonist Satou ended up being called 'The Freak'/'The Pervert' after a series of events resulted in his being Dragged into Drag, Shaga became known as 'The Beauty by the Lake' after falling asleep in the park in the aftermath of her first victory, and Yarizui was christened 'Ice Witch' after the time she, an underage student, attempted to purchase a vodka mixer, under the impression that it was a soft drink.
• In Beyond the Boundary, Hiromi calls Akihito "Akkey". He gets embarrassed by that, mainly because it sounds like a nickname of a washed-up idol to him.
• In the libertarian pulp novel Code Name: Survival, a Really Gets Around biker with occasional A Lighter Shade of Black moments is called Bend-Over Betty, a name that gets more than one Double Take.
• Mary from The Color Purple hates being called "Squeak", but everyone still calls her that.
• In The Curse of M, Lorna's siblings saddled her with Fun Size (an affectionate jab at her height, or lack thereof) and the Anger Management Hairball, as she has long hair and a nasty temper. She tolerates both because they come from her family, and are not meant as actual insults.
• Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.:
  • The title character is actually named Dan Chambeaux, and hates his nickname because it makes him sound like a decrepit, rotting "shambler", not the well-preserved specimen of walking dead he is.
  • Inverted by the weather wizard Thunder Dick, who actually chose to be called that. He's perfectly happy with his nickname, but everyone else finds it understandably embarrassing.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • Annoying Younger Sibling Manny calls his older brother Greg "Bubby", much to his chagrin. It comes to a head at the School Play, where Manny calls out to Greg (who is playing one of the trees). To avoid the shame, Greg immediately refers to another of the kids playing the trees as "Bubby", which pays off as said kid is seen being bullied later on for it.
  • Cody Johnson once stepped in dog poop when he was in kindergarten, and ever since then, people have called him "Dookie." Even the principal calls him "Dookie Johnson" when congratulating him for getting straight A's over the PA system.
• Dirty Pair: Kei and Yuri are officially codenamed the Lovely Angels. However, due to their unfortunate and accidental tendency to leave a place much worse than it was when they arrived, they've earned their infamous and much-better-known nickname: the "Dirty Pair".
• In Don't Call Me Ishmael!, bullies transform the protagonist's name from 'Ishmael Leseur' into 'Stalepiss Manure' and 'Fishtail Le Sewer'.
• In The Dresden Files, names have power, so Harry enjoys giving silly nicknames to powerful entities. The more imposing the adversary the sillier the nickname — the Knights of the Blackened Denarius, a group of people possessed by fallen angels, become "the Nickelheads", and the skinwalker so powerful and so fundamentally wrong that looking at it with magical sight sent Harry into hysterics became "Shagnasty".
  • He does get into a bit of trouble once when he refers to the Archangel Uriel as "Uri". His name roughly translates to "God is my Light", with the "el" bit specifically referring to God. Being an angel and all, Uriel is quite upset about having what he considers the important part of his name lopped off. He's all right with Dresden calling him "Mr. Sunshine" instead, though.
• Durarara!!:
  • Kyohei Kadota is given the nickname "Dotachin" by Izaya, whom he despises as well as the nickname. His friend Erika will occasional refer to him as Dotachin, getting a mix of responses back.
  • Call Shizuo Heiwajima "Shizu-chan". We dare you.
• In The Emigrants the reason why Arvid moves to America is to escape the rumors that he had sex with a cow, and the nickname the rumor earned him — the Bull at Nybacken.
• Expecting to Fall into Ruin, I Aim to Become a Blacksmith: Since the protagonist Kururi becomes an Ultimate Blacksmith, the leading blacksmiths in his kingdom give him the nickname "The Great Dancer" without telling him.
• In The First Law series, the Northern "Named Men" get their names based on some distinguishing feature or act, and those names aren't always badass:
  • In the original trilogy, the Cowardly Lion of the group is accurately if insensitively dubbed Forely "The Weakest".
  • Caul Shivers got his name because in his early days as a warrior, he got up during the night to urinate and fell into an icy stream. He later jokes/claims that the name was given becaue his enemies shiver at the sight of him, which ironically, eventually turns out to be true, given the later trajectory of Shivers' life.
  • In his POV, the Old Soldier Curnden Craw initially connects his nickname to the fact that things always stuck in his craw when he was younger. However, later on, it is revealed that the name derives from the fact that after surviving his first battle, he almost died at the feast after after choking on a chicken bone.
• In Flashman and the Redskins, Flashman is adopted by an Apache tribe and, due to his horseback skills, is named White-Rider-Goes-So-Fast-He-Destroys-The-Wind-With-His-Speed. Unfortunately, for convenience it's shorted to He-Who-Breaks-The-Wind or Wind Breaker. Given how Flashman farted his way down the Valley of Death at Balaclava, you could say it's appropriate.
• Ben from Gangsta Granny doesn't like being called "Benny" by his granny because he thinks it's babyish.
• Goblins in the Castle: In Goblins on the Prowl, John the giant doesn't like being called "Bonecracker", due to it having been earned in an incident he doesn't like to remember where he accidentally, and badly, injured a knight in an effort to save that knight's life from John himself.
• Half Moon Investigations is named for the small-for-his-age protagonist's Embarrassing Nickname, Fletcher "Half" Moon.
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:
  • Mrs. Weasley is forced to admit that her husband calls her "Mollywobbles" when they are alone.
  • In the same book, Lavender refers to then-boyfriend Ron as "Won-Won". His friends' reactions are predictable.
• Kyon from Haruhi Suzumiya hates it when people don't call him by his real name, but he can't be bothered to change it, so it's the only name he's known by to the audience. According to him, his aunt first called him that name, and his younger sister was responsible for spreading it to the point that it's now what everyone calls him. In the ninth novel, Sasaki points this out rather blatantly, and teases the readers with Kyon, by claiming it's a royal and imposing name.
• Almost every character in Hidden Talents is Only Known by Their Nickname, and some of those nicknames aren't flattering:
  • Hindenburg is named after the Hindenburg class of airships, because they're both full of gas.
  • Trash's name refers to how he "trashes" objects by throwing them, but considering his status as a social outcast, it's probably also intended to be an insult.
  • A background character called Patrick Pardeau is known by his initials, "PeePee".
  • Martin may have been called "Fartin' Martin" at some point in his past. Flinch also tries to name him "Squirt", but the name doesn't stick, to Martin's relief.
• In High School D×D, the Heavenly Dragons Ddraig and Albion get nicknamed "Breast Dragon Emperor" and "Butt Dragon Emperor" since their hosts Issei Hyoudou and Vali Lucifer have fetishes for breasts and butts respectively. Both dragons are so embarrassed by this that they go into a Heroic BSoD whenever it is mentioned.
• Honor Harrington isn't overly fond of being called the Salamander. And then in the Beginnings short story "A Call to Arms", we meet Lieutenant Travis Uriah Long, whose nickname progressed from Travis Oolong (U. Long) to Travis Tea, until it reached its current form: Travesty.
• Horatio Hornblower's wife Maria calls him "Horry". Hornblower doesn't like his first name anyway, so when Maria starts calling him that he's rather mortified. (Not that he says anything about it.)
• In The Horse and His Boy Prince Rabadash was transformed into a donkey, then regained his human form, but was told if he went ten miles from the capital he would be transformed permanently, and was thus constrained from going to war against his neighbors. As a result, "to his face and in his lifetime he was called Rabadash the Peacemaker, but behind his back and after his death he was called Rabadash the Ridiculous."
• Journey to Chaos: Tiza's apprentice mentor, Sathel, calls her "cocoon" because she is not a full fledged mercenary. This never fails to provoke a blush and a protest from her.
• Knight and Rogue Series: Fisk's oldest sister calls him Nonny in "Rogue's Home".
• Conversed in Letters to His Son. Lord Chesterfield warned, well, his son never to do anything which mimics^note as in, people who mimic you would use to give him one. That's why he regarded perfect manners, style etc. as so important.
• The Long Ships: You might think that being enough of a dandy that your own men needle you about your dress sense might be embarrassing to a badass viking, but the narration notes that Olof Styrsson actually likes his nickname "Summerbird".
• In Lord of the Flies, one main character — a fat, socially awkward boy — is known only by his nickname, Piggy, which he hates.
• Louisa The Ballerina features Louisa, an aspiring ballet dancer, who is often called "Weezer" by her family and friends, especially her sister. Louisa hates it, claiming that her real name is much more suited to a dancer.
• MASH: There is "Spearchucker" Jones, whose nickname has a very embarrassing backstory (and it's not the one he gives, either). However, he seems to accept the nickname in good humor.
• Muggie Maggie: When Maggie doesn't want to learn cursive, she writes her name in a sloppy way that makes it look like "Muggie." Her teacher reminds her that she has to close her cursive A's, and that her name is not Muggie. Everyone starts teasing her and calling her "Muggie Maggie."
• N.E.R.D.S.: Jackson Jones initially doesn't like to be called by his codename "Braceface", which is given to him automatically since he didn't choose one for himself. He slowly warms up to it and even voluntarily requests for his codename back when becoming an agent again after his 10-Minute Retirement. By the end of the book, Jackson fully embraces his nickname.
  Ruby: Looks like you get to save the world again, Jones.
  Jackson: We're in the field, Pufferfish. Call me Braceface.
• Nina Tanleven: The Ghost Wore Gray features Baltimore Cleveland who, when introduced and learning Nine’s own nickname, cheerfully says that Nine can call him Baltimore, or his own nickname — Balty, which he quickly admits that he doesn’t care for since it sounds too much like “Baldy”. Nine quickly agrees to call him Baltimore.
• Old Kingdom: Touchstone in Sabriel. Mogget gives him the name, and Touchstone finds it quite annoying, (it's a fool's name) — yet he can't argue with it. (That he can't remember his real name at that point also helps.)
• Several characters in The Pale King have unusual nicknames, like ‘Irrelevant’ Chris Fogle, Ms. 'Iranian Crisis' Neti-Neti, David 'The Young Man Carbuncular' Wallace, and Diablo the Left-Handed Surrealist.
• The titular cat from Peter No-Tail, also known as Pelle No-Tail or Pelle Svanslös, goes by just "Peter" or "Pelle" ^note  This technically is not a Dub Name Change; "Pelle" is just the Swedish form of "Peter". ; the "Svanslös" ("No-Tail" or "Tail-less") is a title bullies like Måns call him.
• In Bernard Glemser's The P.R. Girls, Sue, who is the head of the department of public relations for a major Hong Kong hotel, is woefully called upon by a Chinese girl who keeps saying, "Oh, Miss Sue!" This causes people to give her the nickname "Missue" which she hates.
• The narrator of the Raffles stories, Bunny, is so named after an unflattering cricket term denoting an extremely incompetent batsman. Doubles as Affectionate Nickname, since he himself doesn'e seem to mind it.
• Red Moon Rising (Holt): Jo nicknames Rae "Tootie". Rae's sister Temple starts calling her this too.
• In Renegades, both Nova and the man registering her for Renegade trials agree that Insomnia is a lame nickname for a superhero, but since her honorary uncle suggested it to her a few days prior (and she couldn't think of anything better), she still goes with it.
• The Rifter: John has been transported from Earth to the world of Basawar. In the Basawar language, John sounds rather like Jahn, which is a word for an animal with a tawny coat, a name for a pet; John is blond, and when he says his name, people take it to be a contemptuous nickname; he is repeatedly sneered at for that. John is willing to put up with it because of his habit of extreme self-effacement. Eventually, after John becomes part of a Fai’daum fighting unit, the commander insists that he has to have a more dignified name, and settles on Jath’ibaye. It's a symbol of how much more humanely the Fai'daum behave than most of the rest of society.
• Kiara from Rogue is known as Crybaby Kiara because she cries at school almost every day. She tries to befriend new kids before they find out about the nickname, but they always get sick of her and ditch her within a few weeks.
• Pinhead (in reference to Clive Barker's own dislike of the nickname that became synonymous with Doug Bradely's portrayal of the character) has become this to the said Cenobite in The Scarlet Gospels. Saying it to his face is the last mistake the truly foolish tend to make.
• Shaman Blues: Konstancja calls her daughter "baby chick". When Witkacy uses it, he's told to never ever say this again, and that Konstancja is only allowed to do that because she's Wiktoria's mother.
• Skippy Dies: Almost everyone at Seabrook Academy, students and teachers alike, gets an unflattering nickname. There's Ruprecht "Blowjob" Van Doren, Father Jerome "Pere Vert^note pervert" Green, and Howard "The Coward" Fallon. Howard is especially embarassed by his nickname because he thinks it's a sign that his students know about his greatest failure from his youth, though Haley insists it's just a meaningless Rhyming Name.
• Skyward: Jorgen is extremely annoyed when Spensa's nickname for him, Jerkface, catches on. Subverted with Hurl, who chose that name herself.
• In Slayers, Lina Inverse's closely guarded secret is that her official nickname is "Pink Sorceress". It is actually supposed to be a magical title akin to Red Baron, but she is extremely embarrassed about the "pink" part. She has plenty of others to go with her awful reputation too. Among them are "Bandit Killer" and "Dragon Spooker". Call her by any of them and you can consider yourself dead.
• Small World (Tabitha King novel): Dolly hates the name Dolly, to the point that using it functions as a Berserk Button.
• A Song of Ice and Fire is rife with nicknames, many of them quite embarrassing:
  • Tyrion Lannister has been scorned his entire life for being a dwarf, and does not like to be called the Imp. An early Establishing Character Moment has him explain how he owns the insults pinned to him.
  • Meanwhile, his brother Jaime has never lived down being the Kingslayer for killing Aerys Targaryen despite being a member of the Kingsguard.
  • "Brienne the Beauty" is a cruel Ironic Nickname referring to her homely appearance.
  • Rumour has it it's best not to call Oberyn Martell "The Red Viper" within his hearing.
  • Aerys II Targaryen's thoughts on being given the entirely accurate nickname of The Mad King have gone unrecorded, however...
  • Lord Walder Frey is called the Late Lord Frey because of showing up to a battle when it was almost over, assuring the winning side that, of course, he had intended to help them the whole time. It's also appropriate in light of his refusal to die, his heir having died of old age waiting.
  • Many Freys have embarrassing nicknames, such as Aegon "Jinglebell" Frey, Petyr "Pimple" Frey, Hosteen "Ser Stupid" Frey, Merret "Muttonhead" Frey, Amerei "Gatehouse Ami" Frey and such.
  • Sam's first nickname is Ser Piggy, referencing his weight. He's convinced that his second nickname, Sam the Slayer, is an Ironic Nickname until it's pointed out to him that it's actually true.
  • Daemon Targaryen's first wife, Rhea Royce, was called The Bronze Bitch by her husband in letters (her house sigil is colored bronze).
• Milkman from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon is called this his entire life after a neighbor caught his mother breastfeeding him long after he was too old to be breastfed.
• Star Wars Legends: In the X-Wing Series novels, Wedge's first astromech has the designation "Mynock".
  "Are you called Mynock because you draw a lot of power?"
  Urgent whistles and tweets were translated to a scrolling line of text at the very top of the screen. "A pilot once said I screamed like a mynock when we were in combat. A slander, Commander."
  "I can understand that. No one likes to be thought of as a space rat."

In a later book, Wedge finds out that his screaming in battle is indeed distracting, and has his mind wiped.

• Taiga Aisaka of Toradora! is called the "Palmtop Tiger" because of her short height and her Hair-Trigger Temper, as well as her name sounding a lot like the English word "tiger". And in case you're wondering? She absolutely HATES that name.
• Tortall Universe: On her first night, Beka Cooper gets nicknamed "Fishpuppy" because she gets tripped headlong into a pile of fish offal. The whole neighborhood finds it hilarious and the baker even makes her a couple of fish-shaped loaves, to her mortification. (Though she still takes the bread.) Later she's embarrassed to be called the complimentary "Terrier", but she grows to like it so much that Pounce accuses her of preening. She's also not fond of "Bloodhound" at first because of the exhaustion and emotion she went through.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: In the Marie Route Alternate Timeline, as part of Leon’s Loving Bully behavior towards Marie, after he sees her envy of Olivia being dubbed "The Goddess of Victory", Leon dubs Marie "The Goddess of Material Transport" (since they’re doing supply runs), and suggests Marie be their unit’s Mascot.
• The Unadulterated Cat warns against giving the cat one. One of the cartoons features a man standing in the doorway calling his cat by name: "Sperm Bank!"
• In Void City, the vampire Veruca is nicknamed "Froggy" because the only animal she can shapeshift into is a frog. Her real name is no better, meaning "wart".
• Warhammer 40,000: In Black Legion, Lheor hates being called "Firefist". Unfortunately for him, people calling him like that is a Running Gag in the first book. It turns out he got the nickname when a malfunctioning plasma cannon exploded in his hands during the most traumatic event of his life.
• In The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963, Byron calls Kenny "Poindexter" to mock him for being so scholarly, which he hates. In the first chapter, Kenny's father tells the kids about how he had to compete against a guy named Moses Henderson, nicknamed "Hambone Henderson" for his lumpy hambone-shaped head, for their mother's affections in their youth.
• The Witchlands:
  • When they were both kids, Safi used to call Leopold "Polly". When they meet at a ball, years later, she calls him Polly again and he's horribly embarrassed, being as he is now a young adult and the heir to an empire. So, obviously, she keeps calling him that in public.
  • Esme dislikes the title "the Puppeteer", as she considers it too childish, but everyone who's heard of her uses the nickname, including her boss.
• Wonder Woman: Warbringer: Tekmassa calls Diana the unflattering Phyxis, from the small vials made of clay. Di's origin is that she was formed from clay, which in this version is unique to her and not how all the Amazons were formed as is usually the case when this origin is used in the comics.
• In Worm, the superhero Lady Photon is usually referred to by the media as Photon Mom, which she loathes.
• In The Worst Thing About My Sister, Marty gets nicknamed "Bluebottle" for her blue dress she had to wear to a party, which she hates because she doesn't like wearing dresses.

Live-Action TV

• Agent Melinda May of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. absolutely hates her nickname of "The Cavalry", because the mission she got the nickname on ended with her being forced to kill an insane superpowered child.
• Angel: Wesley was "Head Boy" at Academy. He seems blissfully unaware of the connotations—which is understandable, as Head Boy (and Head Girl) is an extremely normal title in British schools.
• Another Period: Newly-hired maid Celine is promptly (and arbitrarily) dubbed "Chair" by family matriarch Dodo Bellacourt. In a later episode, head butler Peepers threatens to re-dub her "Water Closet" if she doesn't toe the line.
• Mr. Rumbold on Are You Being Served? had the rather unflattering nickname of "Jug Ears".
• The A-Team, "Lease With an Option to Die". B.A.'s mom still calls him "Scooter" because of his fondness for scooting a toy truck across the carpet when he was little. Murdock keeps bringing it up throughout the episode.
• "Foxhole Norman" from Band of Brothers, which says all you need to know about his combat competence. Bill Guarnere is occasionally referred to as "Gonorrhea" (but mostly as "Wild Bill").
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • Howard's mother and eventually Bernadette call Howard "tushie-face", something which Leonard immediately posts to Twitter upon hearing.
  • When he was picked to fly to the International Space Station, Howard wanted a macho nickname among the astronaut group so he programmed Elton John's Rocket Man as his cellphone ringtone and had Raj call him while he was in a teleconference with real-life astronaut Mike Massimino. Unfortunately his mother chose that moment to tell him to come and eat his Froot Loops. Guess what his nickname turned out to be?
  • Sheldon was mortified when Penny found out that his "Meemaw" (Grandma) called him "Moonpie". Only his Meemaw is allowed to call him that.
• In addition to "Bones", Dr. Temperance Brennan has also been addressed as "Morticia", mostly by her former classmates.
• In one episode of The Brady Bunch, Mike reluctantly tells Carol that his was "Hot Lips" in high school.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • When introduced, the vampire Spike was said to have been known as "William the Bloody", which seems to be one of those Names to Run Away from Really Fast. A few seasons later, we learn that in life, he was actually an effete, meek mama's boy and got his nickname because of his poetry, which was "bloody awful."
  • The Anointed One's nickname "The Annoying One", courtesy of Spike.
  • Anne gave herself the name Chantarelle to sound more mysterious. She later gets extremely embarrassed after discovering that "Chantarelle" is a type of fungus. ^note  Albeit a very tasty (and good for you!) one.
• Castle:
  • Rick Castle's ex-wife refers to him as "kitten". Then Beckett overheard.
    Castle: I definitely saved your life. And you know what that means, don't you? It means you owe me.
    Beckett: Owe you WHAT?
    Castle: Whatever I want. And you know exactly what I want, don't you? You know what I really, really want you to do... never, EVER, call me kitten.
  • In another episode, Castle starts a Newhart Phonecall by saying, "No-Hassle Castle." Apparently Beckett threatens to start calling him that.
  • Detective Ryan is sometimes called "Honey Milk" after his revelation of the drink his girlfriend sometimes makes him at night.
• In Charmed, after making out with a guy under the bleachers in high school, poor Phoebe ended up with the nickname "Freebie".
• On Cheers, the gang finds out that Rebecca's college nickname was "Back Seat Becky". It's never revealed why, although it's probably not hard to guess.
• Community:
  • "Fat" Neil.
  • "Tinkle Town", Jeff's nickname from when he was a boy.
  • "Star-Burns", due to the shape of his sideburns. He angrily demands to be called by Alex, his real name, but nobody ever does.
• On Cousin Skeeter, it was revealed that Skeeter's horrifically embarrassing elementary school nickname was "Sugar Booger".
• On CSI: NY, Danny's nickname for Lindsay, "Montana," started as one of these. Lindsay disliked the constant reference to the fact that, unlike the rest of the team, she hadn't grown up in New York, and considered it equivalent to calling her a hick. When Danny realized how much it bothered her, he stopped for a while. Eventually, as the two of them got closer, it became an Affectionate Nickname.
• In Daredevil (2015), Foggy Nelson's girlfriend Marci Stahl has given him the nickname of "Foggy Bear".
• Danger Force: In "Say My Name", problems caused by Danger Force during Captain Man's meeting with the news causes them to be given strange names, Oopsie Girl (Mica), the Wing Wimp (Miles), Spicy Milk (Chapa), and Gorgeous Hair Boy (Bose).
• Desperate Housewives: Danielle is known as Little Miss Van de Tramp at school. She came up with the nickname herself, but only because it was nicer than what people were calling her.
• In Death in Paradise, Commissioner Selwyn Patterson does not like his niece Ruby addressing him as 'Uncle Selly' in public. And especially not when the two of them are in uniform.
• Dexter: Dexter doesn't particularly like his monicker of the "Bay Harbor Butcher". He does describe his urge to kill as his "Dark Passenger", but he just thinks of himself as Dexter.
• Downton Abbey:
  • Lord Flintshire, a.k.a. Shrimpie. He's a perfectly dignified sixtyish British aristocrat. Apparently his siblings also had sealife-themed nicknames, but he got stuck with the really bad one.
  • Robert keeps trying to get Sybbie to call him Grandpapa, but she won't call him anything but "Donk", apparently after he played Pin the Tail on the Donkey with her and her cousin once. The rest of the family won't back him up because they think it's hilariously adorable, and after Marigold joins the family Sybbie gets her to use it too.
• In Frasier, Niles begins to tease Daphne about her childhood nickname "Dappy" and is about to tell Martin when Martin responds "Is it worse than 'Piles'?"
• Freaks and Geeks:
  • In the pilot episode, Bill's mom writes a love note on the outside of his lunch bag in which she refers to him as "Little Man."
  • In one episode, Sam gets nicknamed "Dr. Love" after he's unable to identify any parts of the female reproductive system in health class.
• Friends:
  • Chandler's old girlfriend calls him "skidmark". He also was called "Sir-Limps-A-Lot" for a year after getting the tip of his toe cut off in an accident during one Thanksgiving.
  • Monica was called "big fat goalie" when she played field hockey.
  • Julia Roberts' character in one episode was called "Suzie Underpants" up until High School as a result of Chandler lifting up her skirt during an assembly when they were both kids. When she encounters him again as an adult, she concocts a revenge scheme to get even with him.
• Game of Thrones universe:
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Petyr Baelish grimaces slightly when Arya asks why people call him "Littlefinger."
    • Tyrion dislikes being called "the Imp," but owns it regardless. He even takes some pride in the sobriquet "Halfman" given to him by the mountain clans. He only takes real offense to being called a "twisted demon monkey."
    • Jaime detests being called "Kingslayer," particularly when it comes from men like Ned and Robert whom he views as hypocrites since they fought a rebellion against said king.
    • Jon Snow seethes at the name "Lord Snow^Explanation"Snow" is the surname given to bastards born in the North. As such, "Lord Snow" is a mocking reference to Jon being from a noble family(which draws resentment from the lowborn men of the Nights Watch) and for being a bastard.," until Tyrion tips him on how to deal with it.
    • Theon plans a Last Stand to avoid being remembered as "The Greyjoy Who Ran," but the ensuing events culminate in him becoming "Reek."
    • Lord Karstark declares that Robb should be called "The King Who Lost The North."
    • Walder "the Late Lord" Frey earned his moniker for his tardiness at the Battle of the Trident.
  • House of the Dragon: Rhaenys Targaryen isn't too fond of being nicknamed "The Queen Who Never Was".
• Hornblower: Horatio's fellow midshipman of a bully calls him "Snotty" and his wife Maria "Horry". The first one is clearly meant to be offensive, but Maria genuinely doesn't know that he dislikes it.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Robin Sparkles! Robin was a teenage pop star in Canada.
  • A coffee barista writes down Barney's name as "Swarley" and everyone calls him that for the rest of the episode. They also call him Swarles, Swarlos, Swarles Barkely, Bob Swarley, mon. Swarhili, Swar-lay, and Swar-wait for it-ley.
• Iron Fist (2017): Danny gave Jeri Hogarth the nickname "J-Money" when she interned on Rand Enterprise's legal team.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
  • When Mac joins the Mafia, he hopes to get a cool tough-guy Italian nickname. Instead he gets called "Pussyhands" by his new compatriots.
  • Mac's former high school classmates reveal that he was once known as "Ronny the Rat" because of his persistent snitching.
• The Latest Buzz: At high school, D.J.'s nickname was 'Triangle Head'. Which may have been Mr. Shepherd's fault.
• In Luke Cage (2016), Cornell Stokes absolutely hates being called "Cottonmouth" to his face. Doesn't stop his own men from using the name behind his back. Mariah Dillard also doesn't like being called "Black Mariah" either.
• M*A*S*H:
  • Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan. The origin of the nickname is explained in the original novel and film: she gets it after a sexual tryst between her and Frank Burns (during which she implores Burns to "kiss my hot lips") is broadcast to the rest of the camp over the P.A. system. Weirdly, in the series some of Margaret's old flames are familiar with this nickname, suggesting that she may have earned the same nickname independently of the 4077 in some unreferenced and unrelated Noodle Incident.^note  Word of God later confirmed it was an accident involving a new car, a very, very cold night, a frozen trunk lock, and poor Margaret's own lips (sometimes you've got to be careful if you're trying blow warm air onto a frozen lock....)
  • Major Frank Burns is frequently referred to as "Ferret Face", a name that apparently originated with his own brother.
• Misfits: Finn finds out that his mom's was "Anal Mary" due to liking a certain sexual act. This also rules out most potential men he thought might be his birth father, for pretty obvious reasons.
• Arthur "Two-Sheds" Jackson in Monty Python's Flying Circus. He's a composer who once told his friends that he's thinking about buying a second garden shed, so they started calling him "Two-Sheds". To his dismay, everyone asks him about the sheds. He considers just getting rid of the shed altogether, to which the interviewer responds that that would just make him Arthur "No-Sheds" Jackson.
• My Dead Ex: Dennis got stuck with "Eleanor" as a result of being mistaken for aroused by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in history class.
• In NCIS, Tony DiNozzo comes up with a new nickname for his fellow agent Timoth y McGee almost every episode. None of them are very flattering. McGee is particularly ashamed of "Elf Lord" (his online gaming name).
• Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide is made of this trope.
  Mose: Hey Coconut Head, would you mind not calling me Mose?
  Coconut Head: Sure, Jennifer. And hey, would you mind not calling me Coconut Head?
  Mose: Get a decent haircut and we'll talk.
• NUMB3RS: Don occasionally likes to tease Charlie by calling him "Chuck", to Charlie's annoyance.
• Patriot: Subverted with the skinny-faced and long-nosed Ichabod. A Running Gag has people assume that it's a nickname, but it's not. It's his real name. Ichabod keeps asking people why they assume that it's a nickname, either not getting the reference or refusing to. People don't want to admit that it would be a dig on his appearance if it were a nickname, so they don't tell him.
• Pipo De Clown: Klukkluk's archery abilities earn him the nickname "Klukkluk the mis-shooting Indian" from Pipo.
• Michael from Salute Your Shorts was forced to admit his grandparents called him Moosh-Moosh.
  • And the counselor, Mr. Lee, was called "Ugh", as in "Ugh Lee" ("Ugly"), but all the campers only call him "Ugh," probably to keep him from getting too mad.
• Skins: "Nips," Tony's less-than-flattering nickname for his girlfriend.
  Michelle: Stop calling me "Nips", Tony.
  Tony: It's a funny name! I've seen a few nipples, Nips, and yours are fucking hilarious.
• In Smallville, Lois sometimes calls Clark "Clarky" when she is annoyed. It gets even funnier when Tess picked it up.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation gives us Reginald Endicott "Broccoli" Barclay. Captain Picard orders everyone to knock it off with the nickname—right before calling him that. In front of the bridge crew.
• Succession:
  • Greg's nickname, when he was younger, was Greg the Egg due to how "misshapen" he was.
  • Logan's childhood nickname for Shiv was "Pinky".
• That '70s Show:
  • In the episode "Magic Bus", to Hyde's horror, the gang learns that Jackie (his girlfriend) calls him "Puddin' Pop".
  • There's Eric's "Dr. Pee Pee".
  • Eric gets called "Foreskin" from time to time (his last name is Foreman). In one episode, it's revealed that Donna started that one, not knowing how much it would stick.
  • "Tater Nuts" for Kelso.
  • Eric calls Kelso "Mr. Poop-Shoes" after an incident where he thwarted his own flaming-bag-of-dog-crap prank. Kelso's indignant response: "IT WAS ON FIRE!"
• The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • In "20/20 Vision", the uptight, highly committed loan officer Warren Cribbens is embarrassed when he overhears Sandy refer to him as "the human calculator."
  • In "Cat and Mouse", Elaine refers to Andrea Moffatt as "the Mouse" because of her shy, mousy demeanor. She also compares her to a hamster and a gerbil.
• Veronica Mars:
  • Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas. A nickname so loathed, protesting against it was one of the last things he did before killing himself. Presumably nicknamed as such because his father and older brother were both nicknamed Dick and liked to torment him.
  • The Principal's son, Vincent, is nicknamed Butters by his peers. And he isn't bitter about it at all.
• Warehouse 13: Steve 'Jinksy' Jinks also picks up the nickname "Poopypants" due to being a bit more serious and less prone to goofing off than his fellow Warehouse agents. He loosens up over time, but never manages to lose the nickname.
• In The West Wing, CJ's Secret Service code name is "Flamingo," which is presumably a reference to how tall and thin she is. Some of the men try to reassure her that a flamingo is a beautiful bird, but she always replies, "No, it's a ridiculous-looking bird!"
• The Wire: Jimmy McNulty is less than enthusiastic when Bunny Colvin, his old commanding officer from his previous precinct, greets him as "Bushy Top", revealing McNulty's embarrassing nickname to his new co-workers. Given that Bunny shows no embarrassment over his own nickname, he probably has little sympathy.
  • Also a Discussed Trope in the show's very first scene, where Jimmy is investigating the murder of a guy nicknamed "Not Boogie", which Jimmy imagines must have started because as a kid the guy forgot his jacket once and had a runny nose, and ever since he's been known as Snot Boogie. In a similar vein, Duquan from later seasons is known as "Dookie", partly because he's often smelly because his parents don't wash his clothes and they often don't have running water.
• Yellowjackets: Travis is nicknamed "Flex", which he seems to really dislike. He later confides in Natalie why: he had back surgery at 12, and another boy at school saw the scar. The boy claimed Travis had had a rib removed so that he'd be flexible enough to suck his own dick. That resulted in the nickname Flex, which stuck.
• You Can't Do That on Television: Christine McGlade hates her childhood nickname "Moose", both on the show and off it. When she had more creative control in later seasons, she forbade the use of it.
• Young Sheldon: Sheldon remembers that six-year-old Georgie was still struggling with potty training, and so Connie would call him "Mr. Soggypants". Georgie is embarrassed and tries to deny this. Missy, naturally, starts calling him that again.

Music

• According to Eric Bogle's "Introduction Song", the members of the band's nicknames are 'Wee Short-Arse' (Eric), 'Garbage Guts' (Brent) and 'Old Dogs Balls' (Andy).
• When Rammstein drummer Christoph Schneider went to register with the German copyright agency he found there already was a musician registered by the same name. Guitarist Paul Landers suggested Schneider to register using the nickname "Doom" because they liked the video game of the same name. In later interviews Schneider has stated that if he had known the name would be printed in every booklet of every CD he ever played on, he would have picked a different one.

Mythology and Religion

• In the Book of Genesis of The Bible, Jacob's brother Esau is stated to have earned the humorous nickname "Edom", meaning "red" in Hebrew, after selling his birthright to Jacob for red soup. The nickname later goes to name his own descendant tribe, the Edomites.

Pro Wrestling

• "Nugget" for Owen Hart, thanks to Shawn Michaels.
• Chris Jericho once referred to Crash Holly as "Elroy Jetson", and fans began chanting "El-Roy" at Crash, much to his dismay. He eventually came to embrace it later on.
• To anyone who didn't know the context, that he had gone an entire year without anyone in Ring of Honor kicking out of it. "Mr. Small Package" was such for Bryan Danielson.
• This happened once where CM Punk called Daniel Bryan "Goat Face" in regards to his massive beard. This went on to become the number #1 trend worldwide and now it's stuck amongst the fans. Bryan... hasn't been taking it well.
• Cheeseburger used to be an anonymous member of the ROH ring crew until he Rhett Titus and Charlie Haas designated him such as out of belief he needed to eat one. It quickly caught on with the fans, who started chanting at him whenever he appeared, and he used to hate it, until Cheeseburger T Shirts became a top seller not just for ROH but also New Japan.
• Jim Cornette is known for handing out embarrassing nicknames to wrestlers he dislikes. Among the most famous are "Kenny Olivier", "Harpo Fingerfuck", and "Twinkletoes McFingerbang" for Kenny Omega; "(My Little Dog) Pockets" for Orange Cassidy; "The Pudding Gang" for The Best Friends; "The Bank-Addicted Drug Robber" for Nick Gage^note Because he served time in prison for robbing a bank to get drug money; "The Plumber" for Jon Moxley; and "The Hardly Boys", "The Cucamonga Kids", and "The Buckaroos" for The Young Bucks.
• When Chris Benoit accidentally broke Sabu's neck during his short stint in ECW, the nickname of "The Canadian Crippler" soon got stuck to him. He was not a fan of it, and could never totally shake it off before his 2007 suicide.

Radio

• Doug Berman, the producer of Car Talk, has many. And Ray lists most or all of them during the credits of the show:
  Ray: Our esteemed producer is Doug "The Subway Fugitive" "Not-a-Slave-to-Fashion" "Bongo Boy" "Frog-Man" "Punkin Lips" "Cute-Cute-Cute" Berman.

Roleplay

• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
  • Amy gets called "cupcake" by her mother, a remnant of her childhood that she's embarrassed by.
  • In one flashforward, the haughty Benedict is referred to as "Benny" by his wife. Zia has a good laugh at his expense when she discovers it.
• In We Are Our Avatars, Marcia Shyneet believes that Slacker Magician is an embarrassing nickname, since it gives anyone the idea that Marcia's a slacker. However, Seth and Kohaku thought it was interesting and gave Marcia a pep-talk.

Theatre

• Li'l Bit and Uncle Peck from How I Learned to Drive.
  Li'l Bit: In my family, if we call someone Big Papa, it's not because he's tall. In my family, folks tend to get nicknamed for their genitalia.
• Prince Achmed from Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier, aka "Tiger Fucker".

Video Games

• Backyard Sports: "Why does everyone call me Fella?"
• Luka, as the personal Butt-Monkey of Bayonetta, get the nickname "Cheshire" bequeathed upon him. It's better than most, but he still hates it.
• BlazBlue:
  • While she mostly doesn't mind, the nickname "Boobie Lady" does unsettle Litchi a bit.
  • On the other hand, Noel does not appreciate Tao calling her "Lacking Lady".
  • Taokaka calls Valkenhayn "Butter Boy" and Bullet "Butt Lady".
  • Tsubaki once gave Jin the nickname "Jinny the Kisaragi", which gave him some manner of irritation. Kagura caught on and started calling him "Jinny" as well, much to his consternation.
• Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly: During Lucas's time at Pro House Vlogs, he was called "baby-goat", "Satyr-boy", "Party-Goatie", or "Mr. Exxxcess".
• In Darkstalkers, Morrigan affectionately(?) refers to Demitri Maximoff as "Demi-Demi". He used to get furious about it (since he's trying to kill her and achieve complete rule over their realm of Makai), but games like Project × Zone reveal that he's gotten used to it and protests her use of it more out of habit than actual outrage.
• In Disgaea, Vyers has the "Mid-boss" nickname given to him by Laharl^note because he is "so weak that he could only be considered a mid boss", in yet another example of No Fourth Wall on that series. It doesn't help that, from that point on, everyone in the game start calling him by that name, and his name on the dialogue box changes as well.
• In Dragon Age II, Varric has nicknames for everyone. Party banter which was recorded but ultimately cut has Merrill thoroughly disliking his nickname for her, "Daisy," and grousing at him that it isn't her name. Carver, in mage Hawke playthroughs, is not fond of being called "Junior," although he'll take that over "little Hawke."
• Dungeon Keeper: The Horned Reaper tends to get called "Horny" a lot... but never to his face.
• EVE Online has a "live with the consequences of your choices" policy, and thus won't change a character's name for any reason, even if it is embarrassing; one fan-created wiki tells the story of a fearsome pirate that chose his character's name poorly, and was stuck for eternity with the name "Buttpipe."
• In Final Fantasy XIV, Hancock greets the Scions in Kugane and, when he sees the Warrior of Light, lists out a series of heroic titles before listing "Stealer of Pants", referencing the time you ended up stealing an old man Dragoon's armor so Hildebrand could disguise himself as him (It Makes Sense in Context).
• Sin Kiske in Guilty Gear often calls his Parental Substitute Sol Badguy "old man", which the latter does not appreciate as he tells the former to stop calling him that. This takes on a whole new meaning (and level of embarassment for the latter) when Sin's father (Ky Kiske) and Sol find out they are related by virtue of Ky marrying Sol's daughter Dizzy. Since this would make Sol Sin's grandfather, the embarassment is understandable as he subconciously did not want to acknowledge the fact that not only did he now have a grandson, but that he was now related to his rival. In one of the after story cutscenes, the embarassment extends to not just Sol but Ky as well, as the sight of his extended family referring to Sol as "old man" only serves to hammer in the reality that he now is related to his longtime rival.
• KanColle:
  • The quickest way to anger Yamato is to call her 'Hotel Yamato', a nickname the real-life ship received due to its luxurious accommodations, plus not actually seeing much combat due to being the ultimate Awesome, but Impractical battleship (the only time she fought enemy surface combatants was the Battle Off Samar, and those were an American escort group the Japanese mistook for their main force). The fact that she was sidelined for most of the war and did very little compared to other battleships really gets to her.
  • Similarly, calling the carrier Amagi an Anti-Aircraft Gun Platform. Amagi, as an Unryuu-class carrier, was built in the tail end of the war when Japan was fresh out of pilots fit to fly from carriers, so she never carried an air wing and her only real means of offense or defense were her AA guns.
• In Kid Icarus: Uprising, Palutena refers to Pit's Mirror of Truth counterpart Dark Pit as "Pittoo"^note "Pit Two", in order to tell them apart. Dark Pit is obviously annoyed by this, especially when Pit starts doing it on a regular basis.
• If you lose at the 'puberty' level of Life: the Game, your character gets the nickname "nipple-faced guy" due to a pimple scar resembling a nipple.
• In Modern Warfare, John MacTavish is nicknamed "Soap". Given how nicknames are given in Real Life, it must make people wonder how he got that nickname. Also, after being promoted into Captain in part 2, he never mentions his nickname, and thus after being addressed by Captain Price (his senior in part 1) as "Soap" after saving him from the gulag, MacTavish's subordinates could be heard asking "Who's Soap?" Captain Price even lampshades this trope by asking in the first game "What the hell kind of name is Soap anyway?" It's a British nickname, meaning he was straightedge, never got in trouble. Squeaky Clean.
• Night in the Woods has Mae, who got the nickname "Killer" back in school for putting a classmate in the hospital during a severe dissociative episode.
• In Octopath Traveler II, Temenos frequently calls Crick a "wayward lamb" (or just a "lamb") due to his status as a newly-appointed Sanctum Knight. This drives Crick up the wall, much to Temenos's amusement.
• Ōkamiden's main character, Chibiterasu, is a magnet for these. He gets one each time he meets a new partner. They are, in order: Mutt, Squiddy, Pooch, dude/boy and Pork Chop. His reaction to each one is priceless.
• Persona 4: Arena gives the Persona 4 characters a series of embarrassing taglines for the fighting tournament, like "Sister Complex Kingpin of Steel" for Yu, or "The Carnivore Who Discarded Womanhood" for Chie.
• Pokémon Scarlet and Violet:
  • Penny finds it extremely annoying that her dad calls her "Pen-Pen," since he's overly affectionate.
  • Downplayed with Miriam during Academy Ace Tournament matches. The announcer will call her "the angel of the nurse's office," and she's slightly annoyed and confused by this at first. However, she then rolls with it and says that she and the player character will just have to have "a heavenly battle."
  • In the North Province of Paldea, there's a trio of Dragon Tamer sisters who take on Red Baron titles of "Dragon's Breath", "Dragon's Wings", and "Dragon's Tail". The latter of the trio admits that she doesn't really like the whole idea, but goes along with it to keep her sisters happy.
  • At the start of the Indigo Disk DLC, Cyrano calls Director Clavell "Velly." Clavell is annoyed that Cyrano would do this in front of one of the students (the player character).
• In Potion Permit, Russo calls Helene "Auntie", much to her chagrin because she's not his guardian.
• Razputin claims in the first Psychonauts that everyone calls him by the name Raz. In Psychonauts 2, you learn that this is a big fat lie and that everyone in his family instead calls him either Pootie or Pooter. Raz is mortified when his family shows up at his workplace for this very reason.
• Puyo Puyo!! Quest: Eight hates being called "hachi" (Japanese for "eight"), because it sounds "like a name for a puppy", and insists on the English pronounciation of his codename.
• In Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, a smitten Courtney Gears gives Dr. Nefarious (yes, the one and only) the nickname of "Snookie Wookums." Yes, he hates it.
• In Rune Factory 4, each of the Love Interest characters have several possible nicknames you can give them, some of which they regard as embarrassing. Some of them are very mild—for example, Arthur is embarrassed if you nickname him "Prince" because he thinks it's too formal. Others are more severe. For example, if you nickname Dylas "Big D," he stutteringly demands that you never, ever use that name in public.
• Duncan Wu from Shadowrun Hong Kong has a bad history with this. In his youth his rather pudgy physique earned him the moniker "Duncan Donut" and his inability to hold his liquor and tendency to run his mouth when drunk got him the name "Drunkan Dump". When forced into the shadows, he receives the handle "Gun Show" for his (admittedly rather impressive) collection of hardware. He hates the name, but resigns himself to it.
• In Tales of Graces Hubert is granted the affectionate title of "Little Bro" by Pascal. Probably doubly sucks as Hubert has a raging crush on her.
• Undertale has two:
  • There's Burgerpants, an MTT Brand Burger Emporium employee who got his nickname from an embarrassing mishap involving him trying to smuggle burgers out of the building in his pants.
  • Asgore is also known to Gerson as "Lord Fluffybuns". When you first meet him, he can't remember why, but promises it'll come back to him eventually. In the Playable Epilogue, he finally remembers that it came from Toriel having a case of Is This Thing Still On?.
• Yes, Your Grace: Among the possible nicknames for her, Princess Cedani really dislikes "Potato-head".

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • Trucy refers to Apollo as "Polly."
  • Rayfa in Spirit of Justice administers nicknames based on hairstyle. Phoenix is "Barbed Head", Apollo is "Horn Head", and Nahyuta is "Braid Head".
  • In Dual Destinies, Simon Blackquill refers to Bobby Fulbright as "Fool Bright". Fulbright doesn't seem to mind it much, though. This turns out to be a mild case of Foreshadowing, as "Bobby Fulbright" is in fact an imposter who assassinated and replaced the original.
    • He refers to the trio of defense attorneys as [Surname]-Dono. Again, they don't seem to mind.
• Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: Maki Harukawa gets christened "Maki Roll"^note a type of sushi wrapped in seaweed by Kaito, which annoys her to no end, especially when other people start using it. Late in the game, she admits that it's grown on her and is part of the reason that she developed feelings for Kaito. She was raised as an assassin from a young age, and realized that the silly nickname was a sign that Kaito wanted to treat her as a friend rather than a weapon or a tool. Her eventual acceptance of it is a sign that she's willing to open up emotionally.
• In Katawa Shoujo, Hisao comments early on that he's never liked the nickname "Hicchan", which Misha typically uses when referring to him, and his parents once use on a note, but never objects to it after that.
• Little Busters!:
  • Komari starts calling Kurugaya Yui-chan. Not only is she horrified with this nickname, she doesn't even realize she's been referred to at first because no one ever calls her by her first name.
  • The combat system rests on the fact that winners are supposed to give embarrassing nicknames to the losers. As the only way to get rid of a nickname is to reach the top of the battle rankings, this gives the impetus to keep fighting.
• In Shikkoku no Sharnoth Charlotte calls Mary "Kitty" once or twice, resulting in this. Later, M starts calling her Kitty as well right before the minigames involving monsters chasing her start, prompting her to yell at him for calling her such a thing.

Web Animation

• Dreamscape:
  • Vampire Lord is called 'Vamps' by Ahjeen.
  • Keela is tauntingly called 'Kee-kee' by Kaila. She isn't bothered by it, though.
• DSBT InsaniT: Blake is also known as 'O'. Just the letter for some reason.
• Etra chan saw it!:
  • In this story, Tokusa gets the nickname "Rich Landowner," because of an incident when Akane misinterpreted "jinushi" for "owning several lands," instead of "having hemorrhoids."
  • The name Acchan was attributed to Tsutsuji at high school. Her boyfriend/husband Akamatsu initially nicknamed her as "Azalea," which is the flower that Tsutsuji's name means in English, before shortening it to Acchan. This freaks her out when Karin and Tokusa refer to the nickname as a name of Akamatsu's nonexistent mistress.
• hololive: La+ Darknesss (yes, that's actually her name), being the Chuuni character she is, demands that her fans respond to her with "Yes My Dark." Fans quickly abbreviated this to "YMD" and spun that into "Yamada," a stereotypical Japanese surname in the same vein as "Smith," and much to La+'s chagrin the name stuck. Even her colleagues now call her "Yamada" to tease her.
• Homestar Runner: Strong Bad has a whole host of embarrassing nicknames for his put-upon kid brother Strong Sad, including "Dairy Queen" ("I already told you I don't wanna be called that anymore. I made a mistake!"), "Trundle Bed", and "Frog Eggs." ("I don't even get that one.")
• The Custodian of If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device is called Little Kitten by his fellow Custodes, even after they find out that he's their Captain-General.

Webcomics

• A-gnosis' comics on Classical Mythology have Persephone ("Destroyer of Light") annoyed that her mother Demeter always calls her Kore ("Girl"). It's part of the Parents as People tension between them: Demeter dislikes the "ugly, ominous" name that Zeus gave her, whereas Persephone enjoys the sense of power it carries and resents being coddled.
• Air Force Blues follows Air Force tradition in saddling pilot characters with embarrassing callsigns, with the main character Capt. Ken Dahl being called "Barbie", which he thinks is just a joke about his name but actually comes from an incident where he sang "Barbie Girl" over the radio to an entire air base.
• Dilvan "Teapot" Ceylon in Anna Galactic.
• Resident Cloudcuckoolander David of Bittersweet Candy Bowl calls his history teacher "Mr. Poodle of Noodles."
• A Bittersweet Life (2014): Gyungtae Kim got the nickname "Byeonbi" after he got constipated in high school. It got shortened to "Byeon", lengthened to "Byeongyungtae" due to a trend, and shortened again to "Byeontae" (pervert). The nickname stuck after he graduated.
• Subverted in The Cyantian Chronicles, in which one character goes by the nickname Twinky, which most sane people would consider embarrassing. The fact that his legal name is Clive S. Lewis may or may not have something to do with it.
• In El Goonish Shive, Diane's nickname is Barbie. She used to like it... when she was six.
• Eerie Cuties: For Ace, this crosses over into Dude, Where's My Respect? territory, since Nina and her sister, Layla refuse to call him by his name. Nina insists on referring to him as "Puppy" despite knowing how it upsets him. While her sister refers to him as either "mongrel", or more commonly, "the mutt".
• In Grrl Power, as Halo explains to a would-be supervillain, "we have a PR department and you don't, so if we want to call you The Periwinkle Butt Sniffer then that's how the public will know you."
• In Homestuck, Latula gives Porrim Maryam the nicknames "Pomary" and "Popo Merrygamz". Porrim suggests a better moniker, so Latula comes up with a third one: " Pornstar". Porrim wisely goes with the second option.
• In Impure Blood, given that Roan is called the Abomination, Dara assumes it, and asks for his real name. Dara tells Mac to call him by his real name even though Mac is an innocent Fangirl who doesn't realize it's a problem — with glowing red eyes to underscore.
• In Looking for Group, Richard hates being called "Dick". Although it seems to be growing on him...
• Zig-zagged with Hatsuki Asagawa from Moon Over June. She in fact prefers 'Hats' to the given name her third-generation Japanese-Canadian parents picked out of a phone book, but the childhood foreshortening 'Suki' can and does really set her off (mainly because her classmates in elementary school got wind of it and... elementary school kids).
  Summer: "You prefer generic headwear?"
  Hatsuki: "It's better than 'Suki-Suki-Five-Dollar'!!"
• A fairly early Nodwick story arc involves several people Yeagar had bullied as a kid forming an organization to seek revenge. The "injustice" suffered by the leader, Borthomew MacForte was being given the nickname "Fart-Foot McPoot" in reference to his embarrassing foot odor.
• Saitama, the eponymous One-Punch Man, doesn't react well to being called "Baldy". Which apparently is part of his given Hero Name - "Caped Baldy."
• In Something*Positive, PeeJee's full name is Penelope Jennifer. Her father later reveals he chose this name specifically so he could call her Penny-Jenny. Needless to say, she loathes it.
• In Sunstone, Lisa is yet to enjoy any of her older brother Mike's names for her. The ones we hear are Betty, short for Elizabeth, which is not Lisa's name, and Lassie in reference to her BDSM collar (which, if it wasn't for Mike's ignorance to the collar's significance would be down right offensive).
• Widdershins: Ben Thackery, Wizard (Third Class) and put-upon Straight Man to Wolfe and Mal's antics, has a moment of pure pain when his cousin starts calling him "Benji". Mal's gleeful grin in the background says it all.
• Tony Comics: Tony is embarrassed by his childhood nickname, "Shortcake", though his parents seem to see it as an Affectionate Nickname.

Web Original

• In Brains, the protagonist Alison sees "Al" as this, since it's a holdover from the days of fighting off the zombie hordes; shorter names meant quicker reaction times. And now her crush continues to call her that, out of sheer habit.
• Calfreezy's online name had quite a snowclone effect with many of his fans calling him a number of things like "Calsqueezy", "Caltripod", "Calfrozen", and "Calpringles". It got taken so far that he made a video asking people to stop.
• In his Super Paper Mario Let's Play, Chuggaaconroy reveals that his mother used to call him Mimikins when he was around three when Mimi says you can call her by that name. Went back to bite him at the end of the LP.
• In Dream High School, Corliss, The Ditz, calls you G-dow (you joked that your name was Grok, Destroyer of Worlds. She believed you and calls you by those initials) and calls Gavin Gav-Gav.
• Daphne Diller, the indestructible private eye in Metro City Chronicles, does not like it when people call her "Daffodil".
• Fairy Tale Friday's version of Thumbelina was nicknamed "Cockchafer" in college.
• Peter in Lovely Little Losers. His nickname, "Pedro," doesn't sound embarrassing—but he hates when anyone calls him that. The implication is that it reminds him of his huge screw-up at the end of the prequel, Nothing Much To Do.
• Nightmare Time: Roman Murray refers to his daughter, Linda as 'piggy', making fun of the upturned nose that she had before her first nose job. She understandibly dislikes the nickname.
• Party Crashers: As shown in their second UNO video, Vernias does not like the nickname "Verny":
  Brent: Why would you do this, Verny?
  (Beat)
  Vernias: ...Shut up.
  (Brent and Nick burst out laughing)
  Nick: Dude, that is such a "Vernias" nickname, though!
  Vernias: I hate that nickname!
• SMPLive:
  • Connor is frequently mocked by being called "Conar", much to his irritation.
  • Schlatt is on the recieving end of this from AntVenom.
    Ant: All I'm saying is I'm not the one named "Gay Slut".
• Tobuscus has a pal, Gabe, who shows up in several of his videos. Toby has dubbed him Gabebuscus, which unfortunately sounds a lot like Gaybuscus. The face Gabe makes when Toby calls him this indicates that he, unlike Toby, is not amused.
• Ghost from True Capitalist Radio hates being called a "hambone". It's ironic since Ghost initially used the term to make fun of people who he deemed to be fat, lazy moochers who contributed nothing to society. He encouraged his listeners to use the term in public whenever they saw a "fat, jelly ass", but the trolls who call into his show during the Radio Graffiti segment began to use the insult against him.
• During the Phantom Blood shorts in Vaguely Recalling JoJo, Jonathan calls Dio Debu ^note While a contraction for Dio Brando, it is also means tubby in Japanese during his attempt at coming up for a nickname for Dio. Dio finds it embarrassing because he does not like being called fat and suggests that Jonathan should call him Chanel instead.
• Whateley Universe: Palantir doesn't like her codename shortened to "Pally".

Western Animation

• In Aladdin: The Series, Amin Damoola absolutely hates the nickname of "Butterfingers", which was given to him by the thieves for being probably the worst thief in all of Agrabah. It pisses him off to the point of being a Berserk Button for him.
• Archer:
  • The title character's code name is the less-than-manly "Duchess". His spy-boss mother claims it was randomly generated, and the fact it was also the name of her beloved dog is purely coincidental.
  • In one episode, it was revealed that Archer's nickname during his prep school days was "Swirling Archer", which was given to him by his former high school bully Ivy who, along with two other older kids, gave Archie a swirly when Archie was a freshman.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Zuko is clearly embarrassed whenever his sister, Azula, addresses him as "Zuzu", especially since coming from her, it's not said with sincere affection.
  • On a less intense note, while Zuko and Iroh are hiding among the Earth Kingdom in season 2, Zuko goes by the name "Lee", but his uncle makes up a fake backstory that he was named after his father, and thus calls him "Junior". Zuko isn't pleased, but it's evidently petty payback for him giving Iroh the unflattering alias "Mushi".
  • Flashbacks in The Legend of Korra show that Toph was still calling Aang "Twinkle-Toes" when he was 40, despite his protests. His reincarnation Korra would later inherit the nickname when she finally meets Toph in the final season.
• Luke Cage, in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, hates getting called "Power Man".
• In Beast Wars, Inferno is a batshit insane Predacon who genuinely believes he is an ant and their base is their ant colony. No points for guessing what he calls Megatron, much to the Predacon leader's chagrin.
  Inferno: As you command... my queen.
  Megatron: Ugh... I do wish he would stop calling me that...
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers:
  • Monterey Jack strongly disapproves of his mother Camembert Kate calling him "Cheezer". It's worth mentioning here that he's the oldest member of the Rescue Rangers.
  • Also, don't call the wanna-be witch Winifred "Freddie"! (Everyone except kind-hearted Foxglove does.)
• In one episode of The Critic where Doris threatens to reveal why Duke's nickname in college was "Puddles".
• Danny Phantom:
  • The titular character has a few. Danny's civilian identity, courtesy of his bullies, gets Fenturd, Fentoad, and Fentoenail. And before he could establish his preferred hero name of "Phantom" with the town, the media gave his superhero identity the name "Invis'o-Bill".
  • Danny himself gives the resident Big Bad Villain with Good Publicity Vlad Masters/Plasmius the nickname "Froot Loops", which doubles as a Berserk Button for a while.
• An aversion in Gravity Falls where the main character prefers to go by what some other characters see as the embarrassing nickname of "Dipper". In fact, most characters don't even know that it isn't his birth name, which post-series material revealed to be the fairly normal Mason.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Lucius really hates being called "Lucy".
• Justice League: "The Great Brain Robbery" reveals Green Lantern had one, but we don't know what it is.
  G.L.: It sounds like Wally, but is there any way to be sure?
  Flash: You want proof? Until he went off into the Marines, G.L.'s nickname was--
  G.L.: STOP! It's him. Man, you promised never to repeat that story!
• In the Kaeloo episode "Let's Play Air Pockets", Mr. Cat refers to Kaeloo as "Priscilla", for whatever reason, which she finds embarrassing.
  Kaeloo: My name is not Priscilla!
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • In "Sonic Rainboom" and "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", three male Jerk Jock Pegasi call Rainbow Dash "Rainbow Crash" and Fluttershy "Klutzershy".
    • In "Newbie Dash", Rainbow Dash gets a chance to fly with the Wonderbolts, but after an accident on her first day gets stuck with the nickname "Rainbow Crash" (again). She spends the rest of the episode trying to erase her bad first impression, but then learns all the other Wonderbolts have embarrassing nicknames from when they were first starting out: Soarin is known as "Clipper" from clipping his wing on a flagpole, Fleetfoot is known as "Flatfoot" for stepping on Spitfire's hoof, Misty Fly is "Daisy", Surprise is "Slowpoke", High Winds is "Hoof-in-Mouth", and Spitfire tells Rainbow "you don't want to know what they call me" before whispering it in her ear.
  • My Little Pony: Make Your Mark: Misty used to be called "Misty-Wisty" by long-lost father Alphabittle when she was a filly, to her embarrassment after their reunion. Alphabittle even tells her that he can stop calling her that if she doesn't like it.
• Pound Puppies (2010): In the episode "The K9 Kid", police academy dog Sarge refers to Squirt as "Pizza Breath", a nickname he gained by eating out of a pizzeria dumpster while living on the street.
• Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Donnie's computer password and username is "Bootyyyshaker 9000", something he is embarrassed to admit but rolls with later.
• In Robot Chicken, the G.I. Joe team gives their new sniper recruit Calvin the nickname of "Fumbles" and humiliating him because of his clumsiness when introduced to the team. He responds by defecting to Cobra, shooting them all in the head, (except Duke, who he leaves alive, when Duke starts pleading to be killed too, saying "No. No, you live with it.") and saying Who's Laughing Now?.
  • On the other hand, Cobra Commander nicknamed him "Trouser Snake" because he thought Calvin's trousers were really nice. By that point, Calvin just doesn't give a damn anymore.
• In the Rotten Ralph animated specials The Taming of the Ralph and Not-So-Rotten Ralph as well as the animated series derived from the specials, Ralph is sometimes embarrassed by his owner Sarah referring to him as "pussykins".
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Homer's Enemy", Homer gave Frank Grimes the nickname "Grimey", which he hated. Eventually, he was buried under that name.
  • In another episode, Lisa pretends to be a boy and is given the nickname "Toilet".
  • In "The Crepes of Wrath", Principal Seymour Skinner is called 'Spanky' by his mother, prompting laughter from all the school children.
• Sofia the First:
  • In "Finding Clover", when Lawrence quits working for Mr. Boswell at his magic show, the former tells Clover not to call him by his stage name "Mr. Cuddles".
  • Cedric's mother Winnie calls him "Ceddy-kins" in front of the Buttercups in "Mystic Meadows", embarrassing him.
• Stanley: In his youth, Dennis the goldfish, being small for his age, was nicknamed "Dinky".
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Domino Squad members Echo and Droidbait, as demonstrated in "Clone Cadets". The latter tends to be the first one to get shot during practice drills, although strangely he doesn't seem to object to the name. Echo, meanwhile, has a habit of unnecessarily repeating orders, and when he objects to being called that Fives retorts that they wouldn't call him that if he didn't have that habit (he eventually comes around to the name).
• In Total Drama: Revenge of the Island, Jo christens teammate Brick with an entire LIST (all but two of which eluding to his unfortunately weak bladder):
  • "Dampy Pants"
  • "Jarhead"
  • "Soggy Shorts"
  • "Major Drippy"
  • "G.I. Joke"
  • "Sir Leaks-A-Lot"
  • "Sir Wetness'
  • "Captain Whiz"
  • "Soggy McGee"
• Overlapping with an instance of in-universe Unfortunate Names, Bumblebee and Bulkhead in Transformers: Animated gained their designations from earning the ire of Sentinel Prime (then Sentinel Major) back during Boot Camp. The former was called out for being a clumsy bumbler who missed his shots and the latter for being "all bulk and no brains". They seem to have settled into those names in the present.
• Sylvia in Wander over Yonder is nicknamed 'The Time Bomb' in the episode of the same name due to her competitiveness and "explosive" temper costing her the race all the previous times she's entered the Galactic Conjunction 6000.
• The Weekenders:
  • One episode concerns Tino picking up the nickname "Pumpkin Pie" as its B-plot (which tied into the A plot of Tish's name being used as a colloquialism).
  • In the second season episode "Vengeance", Carver is given the nickname "Pickle Toes" as the result of a prank, much to the delight of Lor.
• In W.I.T.C.H., when the girls learn the story of the team before them, Hay Lin begins to scribble down their names (Cassidy, Halinor, Yan Lin, Kadma and Nerissa) and use their first initials to come up with C.H.Y.K.N. (pronounced "chicken"). She can't help but wince at that.

Real Life

• Many famous mobsters hated their nicknames.
  • Bank robber George Nelson hated to be called "Baby Face". Bit of a Berserk Button, actually. He tried to get people to call him "Big George" Nelson, but, seeing as how he was only 5'4", that never really caught on.
  • "Bugsy" Siegel and "Bugs" Moran. Their nicknames referred to their tendency to "bug out." Bugsy Siegel (born Benjamin Siegel) preferred to be called "Ben" or "Benny."
  • Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd.
  • "Scarface" Al Capone. He liked to claim that his scars were war wounds, but he really got them in a knife fight as a kid. His preferred nickname was "Snorky".
  • James "Whitey" Bulger really hated being called his more famous moniker since it was given to him by the police because of his platinum blond hair, and always instructed those close to him to call him "Jim" or "Jimmy". Since being caught, convicted and put in prison, he apparently changed his mind and asked that fellow inmates call him Whitey, presumably for the celebrity factor. Also one of many reasons Howie Carr had his unending hatred is that he continually called him Whitey purely to piss him off.
  • Some Italian-American mobsters really hated their nicknames. Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo (because of his short height), Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso (because he liked to bludgeon his victims to death with a pipe) and Joseph "Joey Bananas" Bonanno (a journalistic corruption of his last name and that it implied he was crazy) were good examples.
• Caligula was the childhood nickname of Roman emperor Gaius Caesar ^note (it means something like "little boot", referring to how he'd been made a small Legionnaire's uniform for when he went on campaigns with his father as a child, including a tiny set of boots) which he reportedly disliked.
• There was a Roman emperor who had the nickname "Caracalla" after a type of cloak he was fond of wearing. Though he didn't care for the nickname, it was probably for the best; if his nickname had reflected his personality in any more profound way, we'd be talking about the Edict of Paranoid Fratricidal Tyrant.
• Elvis Presley hated when people called him "the King," believe it or not. Raised a Christian, he would tell anyone who did that there was only one true King.. He didn't like "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" any better, as he felt that any number of black performers, such as his own idol Fats Domino, were vastly superior to him and he suspected he was getting the moniker more or less solely by dint of being white.
• F-16.net has a sizable collection of pilot callsigns and the demeaning meanings behind them.
  • One RCAF pilot got stuck with the call sign "Bobbitt" after he accidentally sheared off his CF-18's phallic refueling probe during an exercise. He was given the tip to forever remind him of what happened.
  • "Mangler" sounds great, until you learn it's not based off his combat prowess, but off an incident involving a hot tub, alcohol, a good-looking woman, and the zipper of his shorts.
  • Jim Lovell was a US Navy squadron mate of Pete Conrad, before they both joined Project Apollo. Conrad gave Lovell the call-sign "Shaky".
• Brian Davison, drummer from the proto-prog group The Nice, somehow acquired the nickname "Blinky", of which he wasn't too fond.
• Silent film comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle disliked his nickname and discouraged anyone from calling him "Fatty" off-screen.
• The Hash Names of members of the Hash House Harriers are usually chosen to fit this trope.
• Professional snowboarder Shaun White has sometimes been referred to as "The Flying Tomato" because of his long red hair. Reportedly, he hates the nickname.
• Swedish king Erik Eriksson, who reigned in the mid-13th century, and is widely regarded both by modern and contemporary sources to have been a very good king, and whose reign was marked by peace, law reform and prosperity, never managed to live down his birth defects, and went to history as Erik the Lisp and Lame.
• Michael Jackson loathed the nickname "Wacko Jacko" with a passion, as the tabloids named him that while finding newsworthy (read: controversial and "shocking") stories about his life. If you wanted to be affectionate, calling him "Mike" was better.
• Donnie Dunagan, who provided the voice for the young version of the title character in Bambi, joined the Marines when he was 18, and, conscious of the prevalence of this trope in the military, concealed his voice acting past from his comrades for fear that if they knew, he would be forever known as "Bambi" Dunagan. (He said in an interview years later that, given how much the film has meant to so many people, he wished he had had the courage to tell them anyway and just put up with the inevitable nickname.)
• The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria^note Here, the word "Syria" refers not to the modern country, but the historic region now known in English as the Levant. When describing the group, many English-speaking sources now use "the Levant" instead of "Syria" for that reason. loathes being called "Daesh" which is the name they are known for throughout the Islamic world and threatens to flog or cut out the tongues of anyone using it. "Daesh" is an acronym for their organization's full name in Arabic (ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah fī 'l-ʿIrāq wa-sh-Shām), but they find it offensive for two reasons: 1) the word sounds close to "trampling" or "discord sowers", both of which had negative connotations and 2) the word has no specific meaning on its own, which undermines their position as a caliphate since they stand for nothing. Westerners (both governmental entities and journalistic media) have also adopted the term, though they do refer to them by the ISIS/ISIL acronym in their respective languages because it's more convenient.
• Ernesto Guevara's nickname of "Che" is actually rather embarrassing when you know the meaning. It’s a meaningless filler word in Argentina similar to “um”. However this was completely unknown to the Cubans who gave it to him as a nickname because he said it a lot. “El Che” to someone of Guevara’s region of Argentina sounds like “The Umm”. Guevara didn’t express any dislike of the name while in Cuba, but did confess to Khrushchev that he would be rather embarrassed to return home with it.
• Medievel history is particularly rife with embarrassing epithets.
  • James II of England took the throne in 1685, but he was universally loathed by Irish and English subjects alike, therefore earning him the nickname, "James the Be-Shitten".
  • Aethelred II of England took the throne in 978, but his poor governance earned him the nickname "Aethelred the Unready". However, it should be noted that the meaning of the term unready has evolved in the English language; at the time it was applied, it simply meant poorly-advised, not unprepared. Nonetheless, it doubles as a Punny Name and Ironic Nickname because Aethelred itself literally means well-advised.
  • Louis V, the last monarch of the Carolingian Dynasty, was known as "Louis the Do-Nothing". He was crowned while his father was still alive in 979, but failed to retake Aquitaine and died heirless at age 20.
  • King William I of Sicily was known as "William the Bad", but not for reasons entirely of his own doing. Early in his reign, William tolerated other religions and promoted literature and science, and he ruled his kingdom efficiently. But in order to do that, he had to centralise authority under the crown by suppressing the powerful barons of Sicily, thus angering them. They turned against him and undermined his rule as Sicily lost its African territories one by one, and ultimately popular rebellions hamstrung William's government.
  • King John of England was known as Lackland (as a younger son, he wasn't expected to inherit any land) and Softsword, due to his military failures. ^note  another nickname "John the Wet" was NOT an embarrassing nickname, as it referred to his improvement of the Navy at that time, and was adopted with wry amusement by King John himself
  • Charles II of Navarre more than earned his sobriquet le Mauvais (the Bad One) by his devious political scheming during the Hundred Years War. His weird and painful death (his doctor ordered him wrapped in linen cloth that had been soaked in brandy, and he accidentally caught fire) became famous all through Europe and was considered God's just punishment for his wickedness.
  • Charles VI of France was originally known as "the Beloved", but later acquired the name "the Mad" after his increasingly-severe mental illness built into a delusion that he was made of glass and that nobody could ever touch him.
  • Charles II of Spain was the product of inbreeding that left him Royally Screwed Up: Such severe underbite he couldn't eat or speak properly, probable mental disability, and a weak immune system that left him frequently sick. He gained the name "the Bewitched", and his death kicked off the War of the Spanish Succession.
  • King Edward VII was known for his serial philandering as Prince of Wales. This got him dubbed "Edward the Caresser", a pun on the Anglo-Saxon king and saint, Edward the Confessor.
  • There are plenty of kings known as "the Fat", "the Bald", and "the Lame".
  • The Byzantine Emperors have some great examples:
    • Emperor Constantine V was remembered by medieval historians as "the Dung-named", which they alleged was because he'd defiled his own baptism by having a Potty Failure in the font. This is again an instance of historical bias; Constantine was a capable ruler and reformist, but he earned the nickname post-mortem because of his opposition to monasticism and iconoclasm (the worship of religious objects and items, later deemed heretical). Because monks wrote the histories, they had the last word, and the name stuck like dung.
    • Emperor Michael III received the disparaging epithet "The Drunk" after his dynasty ended. Macedonian chroniclers wrote extensively about his hedonist past-times like chariot racing and imbibing. However Arab historians paint an entirely different picture, indicating that the nickname was likely propaganda to legitimise the Macedonian dynasty which succeeded him.
• "Dick/Dickie" used to be a common nickname for "Richard" until it evolved into a vulgar slang for "penis". In English-speaking countries, a lot of Richards were at some point Dicks.
• Pedro Pascal's high school classmates called him by the whiter-sounding equivalent of his first name, "Peter"; he eventually admitted feeling "ashamed" that he never corrected them.
• In ancient China, a person normally called people of similar rank by their family name and their style name. Fortunately the English language didn't exist back in the Three Kingdoms period, as Man Chong's colleagues normally called him... Man Boning.
• Illinois politician Jim Oberweis is also known for his ownership of the family dairy and ice cream business. This, combined with numerous failed political campaigns for Illinois governor, US Senate (twice), US House of Representatives (thrice) has led some local press and political wags to call him "the Milk Dud".
• NATO Reporting Names for Eastern Bloc military equipment could get a little silly, including "Aphid" and "Koala" missiles, a couple of Sukhoi fighters called "Fishpot," and of course the "Hormone" helicopter. (Pilots of the MiG-29 fighter, however, found their jet's codename "Fulcrum" rather flattering.)
• In the Office Ladies podcast, when discussing Andy Bernard and his status as The Nicknamer, Angela Kinsey noted that when she was in high school she was known as "Hambone" (from an incident at a Wild Teen Party where she was caught in the host's kitchen eating ham out the refrigerator), and in college she was called "Koosh Ball" (from her permed hairstyle).
• Early on in his career as a professional Overwatch League player, Do-hyeon "Pine" Kim earned himself the nickname "Big Boss" from commentators thanks to his immense prowess with skill-intensive gunslinger characters. He's admitted that the nickname makes him anxious as it enforces additional pressure on him to perform well, though he did end up embracing it a bit following his un-retirement in May 2021, claiming that if He's Back!, he wanted to really earn being called "Big Boss" again.
• Rob Reiner's Star-Making Role was on All in the Family as Archie Bunker's liberal, opinionated son-in-law, whom Archie "affectionately" nicknamed "Meathead". Even after the show ended and Reiner became a successful director and producer, news outlets dubbed him "the Meathead" throughout the '80s (Reiner famously claimed that if he ever won the Nobel Prize, every newspaper headline would be "MEATHEAD WINS NOBEL PRIZE"). It took until the '90s for him to finally shake it off.
• A 9th century Viking king whose Northern English fief was located in York was called Ivar the Boneless, though no one knows why. It has been suggested that he was really limber, that he had brittle bones, that he had lost one or two legs (and the nickname was the result of a mistranslation of that), or perhaps even had erectile difficulties. He was, however, renowned for wisdom as well as being a berserker on the battlefield.
• At the beginning of World War II, the German army used the 3.7 cm Pak 36 as its anti-tank gun. While good at the beginning of the war, by 1941 it was proving to be inadequate to destroy heavier tanks such as the T-34 and the KV-1. This lead to the crews manning the Pak 36 to nickname it "Heeresanklopfgerät" ("army door-knocking device") and "PanzerAnklopfKanone" ("tank door-knocking cannon"), since the only result of firing it at a enemy tank was to announce your presence.

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