RJ Hamster
The Strange Relationship Norway Has to Nicknames
 The Norwegian ArmRead on blog or ReaderThe Strange Relationship Norway Has to Nicknames By Dan Taylor – Comedy Writer on February 8, 2026When I was twelve, I pointed at my buddy’s face and said, “You look like a monkey.”I laughed at the observation and then, having agreed with the accuracy of the observation and its humorousness, our close-knit group of friends joined in.His school life was never the same.For the next four years, he was known as Monkey.We called him Monkey so consistently, I often forgot what his real name was, and would be surprised when a teacher referred to him as his Christian name Scott.He, in the great British tradition, had been given a nickname.I’ve since lost touch with Monkey. As far as I know, he became a graphic designer and went on to be a well-rounded dude, dedicated to his dog and his girlfriend, the days of him being called Monkey long behind him. A photo of Scott I acquired from his Facebook pageI don’t know if he liked the nickname. We never bothered to ask him. And I suspect that if he had communicated his displeasure at being called after a long-tailed primate, we would have ignored him and carried on calling him such, anyway.Nicknames are so woven into British culture, very few people are referred to by their actual names during high school, with these nicknames often following people into adulthood, even if they infantilize the recipient.They stick, whether people like it or not.Which brings us to the topic of this week’s blog post: nicknames and my adopted country’s relationship to them.Sixteen years ago, I moved to Norway, a place where people aren’t given nicknames.Christian names are often shortened, especially if the Christian name on their birth certificate is double-barreled. But you’d be hard pressed to find someone who goes by some name that veers dramatically from what their parents named them.There’s a reason for this: they hate them. “This is great and everything. But can you guys stop calling me Skidmark?”Like I often do, I found this out the hard way.I had a colleague once called Frederick. We became friends and so it became natural to me to decide to call him Freddo.A Freddo, for those unfamiliar with British culture, is a cartoon-frog-shaped miniature chocolate bar.The name didn’t stick. No one else started to call him it. And on top of that, he quietly asked me to stop calling him such.Because I’m a dumb, even by the standards of idiots, I went through this process five more times before I thought to myself, Huh, these people don’t like nicknames.I’ve never discussed it with them to find out why. But I suspect that they see the receiving of a nickname to be inherently critical. That the name is intended to demean.While I don’t consider myself a worldly person, I seek to understand different cultures rather than dismiss them. But this is one of the few areas of cultural difference on which I take a hard stance: Norwegians, I believe, are wrong to be skeptical to nicknames. I also take a hard stance on the shittiness of their potato salad.One thing you notice about nicknames is that they’re almost always given by a friend or family member.Take my buddy Monkey. Sure, the first time I called him Monkey, I was saying he looked like a monkey. And probably the next ten or so times.But after that, it became a term of endearment. He was Monkey, the dude we always hung out with. We weren’t mocking him when we said it, and we weren’t bullying him.Like I mentioned, we were teenagers and so we never discussed it with him. But he must have liked the name on some level. How do I know? We remained friends all throughout high school, along with everyone else who called him Monkey.The only people who didn’t were outsiders, people who weren’t a part of our tribe. Another photo of Scott I harvested from his Facebook page. I believe this is him on vacation.I have first-hand experience to back up this claim, too.During one of my first PE sessions at high school—a game of rugby—the coach out of nowhere started called me ‘Tad.’I didn’t understand rugby, and I still don’t, but because I could run really quickly, I was good at scoring tries.Every time I’d receive the ball and run like Forest Gump toward the try line, he would cheer me on, saying something like, “Go on, Tad!”I never told him, as I was mumbling boil-ridden weirdo incapable of expressing my emotions, but I loved it.This anecdote makes an important point: context matters.In my mind, I’d been noticed by the coach because of how quickly I could run. It made me feel special, like I’d been truly acknowledged for the first time.I don’t know if I paid much mind to whether I liked the linguistics of my nickname, and I wasn’t hung up on whether he’d asked for permission to call me it. I was too focused on the warm feeling it gave me.So how the nickname is used is important. This is the only part of the sport I understand. The bad bit.Should my rugby coach have used it while admonishing me, I wouldn’t have been so fond of it, and rightly so.There’s another important point, this asking-for-permission thing.I discussed this subject with an American buddy. He, too, had also observed that Norwegians don’t like nicknames. He theorized, like I had, that they interpreted all nicknames as demeaning. He also suspected that because permission hasn’t been asked, they’re taken aback by the assumption of it.But when you think about it, all names are like nicknames.No infant gets to choose their own name. I didn’t choose the name Daniel as much as I didn’t choose the name Tad.Our parents decide our names.We’re born, we’re given a name, and then we just along with it. Much like how nicknames are acquired. Only the latter are acquired later in life.And while you can make the claim that our parents have sole right to naming us, this smacks of being an arbitrary rule.I think we all have to agree that a teenager or an adult insisting, “Only my parents get to decide what I’m called!” is a little a silly.It isn’t silly to insist on being able to decide what you’re called, of course. But as mentioned, you never really decided that in the first place. You’re just insisting on being called what you were originally called by your parents.In summation, by all means, if you don’t like a nickname and find it demeaning, it’s fair enough to reject it. Maybe my buddy Monkey should have done that.But to reject them outright because nicknames are inherently demeaning or because permission wasn’t granted to give them? Norwegians are wrong about this.Now that that’s been cleared up, I have to go and pick up my kids Nillie Bean and Big Guy. We have some sledding to do.Thanks for reading! 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