Would A Nickname By Any Other Name Soar So High?

 August 5, 2024

   Who gets remembered and who is forgotten is often dependent on a very bizarre equation.

What’s in a name? Quite A Bit, Actually

   In history, losers sometimes become winners by having superior nicknames. Don't believe me?

Daily Whip Out: "Goyathlay Looks Up"

   Very few people know who Goyathlay is. Same for Henry McCarty, Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh. Robert was a cowboy from Utah, Henry was a dishwasher in Bonita, Arizona and Goyathlay was a Bedonkohe Apache from the Clifton, Arizona area. Oh, and Harry was a cowboy in Wyoming. What they all have in common is that their names are crushingly forgettable, but their nicknames tell a different, and much longer lasting story.

   Goyathlay was dispatching an enemy soldier in Mexico when the soldado cried out for Saint Jerome to save him. Later, other Apache warriors kidded Goyathlay (which translates as "He Who Yawns") mimicking the victim's cries, "San Hay-ronimo! San Hay-ronimo!" which is the Spanish pronunciation of Saint Jerome. Later, some anglos who heard the story, exchanged the soft J Spanish pronunciation for a hard G English pronunciation and extended the word Jerome to Geronimo. 

Daily Whip Out: "Henry The Dishwasher"

   Henry the Dishwasher killed a bully in self defense and then fought on the losing side of the Lincoln County War. At some point he took on the alias of William Bonney and in the last several months of his life, a Las Vegas, New Mexico newspaper called him Billy the Kid.

"Robert Leroy Parker, Ethyl Place and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh having tea in Cholila"

   Robert Leroy Parker took on the alias of Butch Cassidy and some of his cowboy friends started calling his pard Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, "The Sundance Kid" because Harry spent some time in jail in Sundance, Wyoming.

   Thanks mostly to the power of film, all these anonymous losers are internationally known by their epic nicknames. 

   The moral is, if you want to be remembered, you are probably going to need a darn good nickname.

"Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of arguments the most unanswerable."

—William Hazlitt