Nick naming

This summer, I played in a recreational volleyball league with a group of friends from high school. Every Thursday, Andy, Ryan, Jared, Mark, Bri (not from WH—Ryan met her at Pitt), and I met at a gym on Polish Hill and competed other volleyball teams in the league. Last year, we didn’t do very well, but this year our team made the second-seed ranking. Therefore, we made it to playoffs, which took place last night.

I was the first to arrive for the game, so I played with one of the random basketballs lying around the gym for a while and then started stretching. Gradually, everyone began to trickle in, marked by various degrees of excitement. Bri looked a little frazzled, having just come from moving into a new apartment. Jared strutted in with his usual, slightly-arrogant, easy-going confidence, followed by Mark, who was hunched forward in his purposeful loping style, game-ready, with his hair pulled back into a ponytail and strapped down by a sweatband, already looking overly intense. Last to arrive were Andy and Ryan. Andy was brimming with energy and being very much his “team captain” self: high-fiving everyone and asking if we were ready “to do this shit.” Ryan, on the other hand, had competing priorities in mind. He had brought along a spectator.

I got up from stretching, and he introduced me.

“Hey, Ali. This is Kat.”

The girl was of moderate height, with an athletic build. (My initial impression was that she might have been a soccer player.) She had straight yellowy-blond hair that fell to her shoulders and a lot of freckles, yet her skin was almost as tan as mine. Her smile was easy and kind-looking; she reminded me a lot of my childhood friend Leslie. I took her extended hand.

“Hi. Nice to meet you, Kat.”

“Hi . . . Ali?”

Ryan and I both began stuttering.

“Allison—” he started.

“It’s Allison,” I echoed, “but some of my friends call me Ali.”

“Oh, okay. Allison.”

“Ali, Allison; it doesn’t matter.”

It’s odd; I have never been introduced as “Ali” before. Granted, Ryan didn’t exactly introduce me as that; he just spoke without thinking. The fact that he did spontaneously call me “Ali” (and not “Allison”), however, and the fact that I did not even notice until someone else pointed it out made me consider who else calls me by that nickname.

My sister Amy, Ben, Emily, Andy, and Vicky are the ones who immediately come to mind when I try to envision (or “enhear”?) people saying my nickname, but Ryan obviously calls me “Ali,” too, and I would not have thought of him, had someone else not noticed. Just as odd is considering all of the people who do not call me “Ali”: both Kellys, Jared, Mark, my parents.

Nicknames are often considered terms of endearment, but if that were true, then shouldn’t my parents should have been the first to call me “Ali”? Moreover, if nicknames indicate some sort of emotional intimacy, someone such as Ryan—who, although we are friends, I doubt considers me near and dear to his heart—would not call me by that nickname. I have certainly never told anyone to call me “Ali.” Why, then, do certain people call me “Ali,” while others do not?

A certain level of friendly familiarity is definitely necessary to call someone by a nickname. My boss at Pitt, for example, would never call me “Ali.” She, however, explicitly told me to call her “Corrie” (her name is “Corrine”). Honestly, I still struggle with using that nickname when I address her. The first-name basis is not a problem, but writing “Dear Corrie,” in the line of an e-mail just feels too casual, too familiar, too much like writing “Dear Emmy” or “Dear Vicky.”

Being called by a nickname also has a lot to do with the person doing the naming, too. Ben and Emily and even my sister Amy are all affectionate, easy-going kinds of people. It goes well with their natures to use nicknames. Alternatively, Mark—as I mentioned before—is a rather intense kind of individual. It would actually strike me as bizarre if he were to call me anything other than my full name.

As I grow older, I wonder if my nickname will persevere. My guess is that it will only stay around as long as those who already call me by it are around. After all, say I meet the man of my dreams within the next ten years and get married at twenty-eight or thirty. Would I really want my husband to call me “Ali?”

Or wouldn’t I even notice?