Good Monday morning, TSFers! I hope everybody had a nice, relaxing weekend. We can all take comfort in the fact that Arsenal’s men return to action on Saturday, home to Nottingham Forest. The women downed the London City Lionesses 4-1 at the Emirates to open the WSL season. Arsenal went behind 1-0 on a 17th minute penalty then scored four unanswered, including an absolute cracker from million-dollar signing Olivia Smith.
I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this before on CF, but nicknames were on my
mind yesterday. It was probably prompted by Mikel “Strikey Mikey” Merino scoring a hat trick against Turkiye (his 14th goal, to go with 5 assists in the calendar year in all competitions, club and international). That Merino name is more of a family one, coined by my Dad, but I’m determined to make it catch on. There was an interesting article in the Washington Post about “familect” — family-specific words, which was shared in my family group chat over the weekend and seems apropos, too.
But back to nicknames — we’ve got some pretty good ones in sports right now. That list is topped by Cal “Big Dumper” Raleigh. Staying in baseball, Sho-Time for Shohei Ohtani is pretty good, too. In the NHL, we’ve got “WiFi” Arber Xhekaj because his name looks like a password. But he’s a tough guy / enforcer-type player who doesn’t get much ice time. The Slim Reaper (Kevin Durant) has that perfect combination of talent and moniker.
Thinking through current nicknames in sports (and doing a bit of Googling around), they don’t make ‘em like they used to. Maybe that’s because many of what would be the “best” nicknames have already been used. Maybe it’s because a great nickname needs to stand the test of time, which makes it impossible for a current player to fall into that category. Or maybe it’s nostalgia bias on my part.
What are some of your favorite sports nicknames, either current or all-time?
