Pork Chop, Cookie and Roy

I hope the title caught your attention. Names are important, aren't they? I mean, when people find out you're having a child, one of the first things they ask is "Do you have names picked out?" What your parents rarely get to pick is what people actually call you. I'm not just talking about Eddie instead of Edward. I mean not-your-name nicknames - these fall into two groups, "Things" and "other names". Things are, well, things - not names. Like Bunny, Pumpkin and Spike. "Other names", are the ones that aren't really your name, but are still a name - Babs, Butch, Smitty, etc. The reason this comes to mind is that Coworker Tim and I recently named another coworker "Pork Chop". Pork Chop is a very nice lady who comes in twice a week and complains that our company has no money. She shares a given name with a woman who Tim and I are not particularly fond of. When we discuss the second woman, Pork Chop was getting perturbed, thinking we were talking about her. So, we decided (more me and Tim) that she needed a nickname. Thus, if we say <real name deleted> we don't mean her, and if we say "Pork Chop" we do. I think it's cute and fun, and she's not fat, so it's not a piggy joke. We'd suggested "Bubbles" which she flat out rejected, and then, when I suggested "Cookie" (it must have been nearing lunch), she balked - "It's someone else's nickname." Me: "Everything is someone else's nickname." After much prodding, Pork Chop's admits that her husband's friends call him Cookie, and she doesn't know why. I can't believe this. If someone called the Husband "Cookie", I'd sure as heckfire know why, and possibly before agreeing to marry him. But she won't even guess. Once she'd admitted this bizarre and personal fact, she was so flustered that when Tim said "How about Pork Chop?" She readily agreed. I hope it sticks. I have a history of giving people nicknames that stick, including Roy who is actually a woman named Amy. Good nicknames have a good story, and are something you can live with being called. I won't tell you the story of Roy here, it's already getting too long, and I also could share a funny story for a guy named Huff and a really "needs work" story for Sparky. My Phi Sigma Pi nickname was "Frieda" (which never really stuck) - props to anyone who can figure out why. Someday I'll discuss the pain of having a name that IS a nickname. . . .