When you are born your parents give you a name. For some it takes many hours to determine what that name should be. Some want it to reflect family heritage. Some want it to be connected to popular culture, based on some famous book, TV or movie character. Some just like the way it sounds. For whatever reason, you are given a name that your parents want you known by. Then you grow up and your name gets personalized. Your name becomes the unique identifier of you. In some cases decided by some and accepted by everyone. In some chosen only to be used by select groups. In some cases you choose it yourself.
For some it is just a shortening of your name. Jonathan becomes John, Christina becomes Tina, Elizabeth becomes Beth or Liz, etc. For others it is a true nickname. George Herman Ruth became the Babe, Doctor Leonard McCoy became Bones, Djeliba Baba becomes Baba the Storyteller, to name a few.
When I generally interact with people I shorten everyone’s first name, I refer to my son David as D, my niece Alison as Ali, Michael – Mike, Rachel – Rache. My name shortened would be Harv and no one refers to me as that. My first name does not lend itself to many options. With a given name like Harvey, most people call me Harvey.
I have been given different nicknames throughout my life.
Nicknames began for me in high school. In 11th grade I had a chemistry teacher, Mr. Rose, that liked to make fun of certain students. Unfortunately I was one of them. My father had his own import business. He imported little tshatshkis from France. The name of is company was Walter de Paris. He had lots of stationery and envelopes which included his company name. As luck would have it, I used one of his pieces of stationery to write my chemistry homework on. When my Mr. Rose, saw the letterhead, I became Harve from LeHavre whenever he felt like making fun of me. Lucky for me the rest of the students were not impressed with the name (Probably because it didn’t make sense to them (they never heard of LeHavre, France)) so the nickname didn’t stick.
When I got to college I decided to create my own nickname. It seemed that all my friends always dumped stuff on me, whether it be work, responsibilities, or putdowns. So I created the name Herbie D. Dump. The only difficulty with this nickname was that I was the only one using it.
As my nieces and nephews grew up, I again gained another nickname. I was Uncle Itch. I can’t remember who actually started this one. It might have been a mispronunciation of Uncle H that just stuck or someone used it because they thought the things I did were funny. But I’ve kept it. I’ve even used this one to work into some of the stories I tell. Now that my nieces have children of their own and I’ve become a Grand Uncle, I’m trying to get the nickname Grunkle Itch for their kids, which is hard since my nieces still only refer to me as Uncle.
As a teacher my classes mostly referred to me as Mr. Heilbrun. When I went into other classes for short-term visits, students were given the opportunity to call me Mr. H. I responded to either. It was more difficult when there was more than one teacher in the school called Mr. H., which only happened for a short period of time in one school I worked in. Luckily there weren’t many male elementary school teachers with last names beginning with H. In one school I worked in, the principal banned the use of initials to refer to any employee. He felt that students could show respect by taking the time to learn a person’s real name, no matter how hard it was to pronounce.
One teacher of the Learning Disabled always used to refer to me as Mr. Harvey. That was okay too.
As a storyteller, I’m not sure what to call myself. Mr. Heilbrun sounds very formal. Harvey Heilbrun leaves people that listen to me in a quandary as to what to call me. Maybe it would be simpler if I had a show name like Uncle Itch. For now I’ll stick with whatever the hosts of the events I perform in wish to introduce me as. I give them my name as Harvey Heilbrun and let them choose the formal/informal way it should be addressed. I will respond to anything that is not meant as a taunt. Anyone else with any suggestions feel free to share. I’m always looking for ways to make a name for myself.
