What's in a Name

As someone who has been granted with innumerable nicknames, their existence has perplexed me for sometime. I have nothing against them, I just don't know why they exist, especially when they are sometimes longer than the person's real name.

I mean, it makes sense when you have name like Mathialbertimmothy to have a nick name; hell, even Robert deserves a nickname, but nick-names don't reflect that (e.g. Fat Albert). Are we saying nicknames are who the person should have been named? Does it best reflect the person they have become? Do we just really want to call are friend Will, "Mr. Monkey Pants," because it sounds hilarious?...

Maybe that's just me...

Anyway, I'd like to see sociology paper on nicknames and what they say for us as a societies. Every country has them, but why? What do we gain from calling our children, "little ten bun," instead of the name we gave them at birth?

I think it has to be a fear of someone's true name. I think all societies have weird mythology about name-stealing evil magic folk, maybe that's it. Paranoia to novelty in many thousand years.

Either that or "Monsieur Monkey Pants," is just too freaking hilarious to not have someone named as such.

-Thomas