Nicknames in many instances are central to identity. At KC then and now, ask a boy about John Brown and he will look quite perplexed, but ask if he knows ‘Oily G’ and you will get, “Of course mi know him, a mi bredren!” At the same time he will also admit that he was unaware that ‘Oily G’ was indeed John Brown.
So how do these nicknames come about? Some boys arrive at KC with their nicknames intact while others got the names during their tenure at KC. In my time at school some of the common names were as a result of direct visual observation. So we had, for example, ‘Fat Oil’, ‘Fat Man’, ‘Moonface’ and ‘Moonie’. There were at least three ‘Moonies’ in my time. Some nicknames were obviously and distinctly politically incorrect, such as ‘Cripple’ for the boy who walked with a distinct limp; ‘Four Eye’ was obviously bespectacled and for obvious reasons sat at the front of the class. And from the name one could tell that ‘Buck Teeth’ needed to see the dentist sooner rather than later. A very good friend of mine from church and Calabar was, and still is, called ‘Lackasight’ or ‘Lacka’, for even at eleven years old his glasses were as thick as prisms and he could not see at all without them.
Scientific observations led to ‘Sperm Head’, a name that owed its origin to the discovery of the microscope. One of my all time favourites was ‘Five Liter’. That name was given to one of my classmates in 5A who while taking his notes confused five millilitres of a particular fluid with five litres in Vin McKie’s biology class and he then dared to ask McKie to clarify. McKie, who was somewhat of a perfectionist, was so amused at this outrageous faux pas that he immediately dashed into the adjoining staffroom returning with two containers. Holding a small vial between the thumb and index finger of his left hand he shouted at the hapless boy, “This, is five millilitres!” Then for maximum effect and contrast he balanced a five litre glass cylinder in the palm of his right hand and bellowed, “And this is five litres!” From that day on we called the poor chap ‘Five Litre’.
In fourth form we all read the Autobiography of Malcolm X and in solidarity with the fallen black power hero two of my classmates added X to their names, so we had ‘Maurice X’ and ‘Patrick X’. Today the former is still called thus and I was recently amused to see that he uses it in one of his new email addresses. ‘Einstein’ was a nickname of some respect and had to be well earned. That name was reserved for one of my classmates who could solve every physics and mathematics problem with the utmost of ease while the rest of us struggled. I assume that the chap called ‘Pip’ owed that name
to one of the main characters in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens which we had to know inside out for the O’level English Literature examination
‘Pressa Foot’ in the year above mine tried year after year to make the track and field team. He never did, but he never stopped trying. I can still picture him jogging around the track, doing lap after lap way into the evening sometimes even after the sun had set on the horizon. The cricketer in our class was called ‘Fleet’. Again, the origin of that nickname is obscure and I now wonder if his father owned a fleet of taxis or minibuses.
‘Egg Head’ and ‘Eggy’ were self-explanatory, but what should we make of ‘TunTun’ and ‘Guddu Puss’? The boy called ‘Mad Eekes’ was probably a bit eccentric and maybe few of us can recall why we called one boy ‘Donkey’ but there probably was a legitimate reason for it. I never saw ‘YoYo’ with that popular toy but he still goes by that name today. However, what most of us will remember about ‘YoYo’ were his loud eructations. These would reverberate around the pavilion after school, usually during a football game and all and sundry knew that they came from ‘YoYo’ who had just had a drink of something or the other, most likely fresh tap water.
Some names were left at the gates of 2A North Street while others were destined to follow us into the workplace, and beyond. So for instance even today we still have ‘Ratty’, ‘Maggie’ and ‘Sango’, three nicknames which have stood the test of time.
Teachers were not immune to being given nicknames. At Melbourne I recall that there was a male teacher who was called ‘Django’, a name borrowed from the legendary star of the popular western movies of the time. ‘Humpty Dumpty’ was a teacher with a bigger than normal head but I am sure that no student called him that to his face. I recently read an article where Spanish teacher Rachel Manley recalled that she was called ‘Pork’ by KC boys. Obviously, they called her that to her face or when she was nearby. Whatever they called her most boys nevertheless thought that she was the most beautiful teacher on the planet. For years among my peers to be called a ‘Pork Eater’ was the gravest of insults because ‘man and man nuh eat pork’ which was seen as a disgusting dietary practise of ‘Bald Heads’only.
‘Djando’ was not the only nickname taken from a movie character. In the cadet we had a youngster who was commonly called ‘Tengey’, sometimes he was called ‘Trinity’. Most Jamaicans now know him by the latter name. For those born after the ‘70s the movie character ‘Trinity’ was one of the ‘baddest’ cowboys in western movies in the ‘70s, rivalling ‘Django’.
Assuming that nicknames abounded at KC long after my time, I called up my son and asked him to tell me a few of the popular nicknames from his era, from the new millennium. He obliged and told me a few. For instance, he clearly remembered that two of the outstanding athletes of his day were ‘Milo’ and ‘Breed’ but the other nicknames that he remembered were too outrageous and too graphic to put into print in a family friendly newsletter like this one. Now that most of his school mates are in the workplace I doubt that they can still use their KC nicknames.
I have deliberately omitted the real names of those whose nicknames I have mentioned above. Their identity must be protected from their wives, mothers and children. After all, I do not want to be responsible for wives going to their husbands and saying,“ A thirty years me know yu now, so how yu neva tell mi sey dem did call yu ‘Sperm Head’ a school?”
