Nicknames Around Town

Carlos, Leocadio and Felipe - or, as we call them, Galera, Cachaco and Arache

There are quirks and peculiarities that come with living in a small, isolated community. One of the most common in my service is that of people’s names, or rather, the reliance upon nicknames, or apodos in Spanish. With about 1,800 inhabitants and seven or eight dominant surnames, I find most people at my site have some sort of nickname or, in some cases, multiple nicknames which can be fun and occasionally frustrating for the outsider. I once had a slightly tense conversation, for instance, about why we should invite Epifanio down the street to an event while my counterpart was overwhelmingly in favor of Tobillo (“ankle”); twenty minutes into the discussion we both realized we were actually talking about the same person and, shaking our heads in recognition of our mutual foolish error, fist bumped that we were in complete agreement about who to invite. Ranging from the standard – Juancho for a handful of town males named Juan Andrés – to the fairly ridiculous – one of my friends in town is sometimes referred to by a local word denoting, um, large genitalia – a splattering of interesting apodos certainly make daily life colorful and occasionally humorous. 

In typical fashion of the Colombian coast there are plenty of blunt nicknames that would seem rude or grossly inappropriate to American sensibilities, but are rarely negatively intended and, for the most part, merely physical descriptors. La Gorda (“the fat lady”), for example, is identifiable without too much difficulty, even in a town that is not soon to win any awards for petiteness of local residents.  And despite being a predominantly Afro-Colombian community, Negro (“black male”) – to the best of my knowledge – is used for only a couple of specific guys of standard local complexion while on the other end of the color spectrum Mono (the “light guy”) is used for two slightly lighter-skinned Afro-Colombian males in my part of town. There are several Calvos (“Bald guys”) with various states of baldness. Lobo is called such because of his physical likeliness to a small, darting lizard of that name in the local dialect.

 

One of these is "Mono" - any guesses?

Some nicknames are physical descriptors stemming from childhood and, while no longer applicable, have stuck. Cachaco has never left the north Atlantic coast, but apparently had lighter skin when he was a little child and thus looked more like someone from the interior as his nickname indicates. A neighborhood kid, whose real name I have never heard, suffered from some malady during his infancy and is therefore known solely as Hueso (“Bone”).

Individual behavior, understandably, can result in some fun nicknames. Boca (“Mouth”), my next door neighbor, is easily heard blocks away. El Bobo (“The Fool”) famously hopped on a boat leaving town one day and left his infant daughter at pier, realizing she wasn’t with him only when he arrived to the city. Socotoco was punished as a child for touching a machete (“soco” being a synonym for the tool, the name would mean more or less “touch machete”) and Escopeta (“Shotgun”) is fittingly rambunctious and ready to go off any moment. 

Other names come from random places. There’s Mello (“Twin” in the local parlance) who has a twin sister and Arache who is from a town of that name outside of Montería in the department of Córdoba several hours south in the mainland. Pambelé (the name of a world famous Colombian boxer from the region) may or may not have won a fist fight while a teenager and Peluche (“Plush”), though currently with short hair, could have been particularly fuzzy at some time. Candela (“Candle” or “Flame”) is my host sister’s godfather and, in addition to not knowing why he is called that, my host parents can’t recall his real name, having called him Candela in thirty-odd years of friendship. My counterpart for traditional Afro-Colombian drumming and dance activities with kids and youth we started in town goes by El Docto or El Doctor (“The Doctor”; I have seen both spellings on his shirts). “The doctor without a title,” he jokingly refers to himself sometimes. I am in the minority of people in town who know his actual name; I have never heard anyone in his family (his wife included) call him anything other than “Doctor”. I’ve never figured out why Mocho (“guy with the stump” or “the amputee”) is called that, having all four limbs intact; I can only speculate about different potential nicknames for Osvaldo down the street who blew off both forearms in a dynamite accident years ago. The nicknames of other neighbors and friends can probably be traced back to some obscure, inside-joke origin but I haven’t heard good explanations; they could easily fall that into that category of nicknames which are just made up through the boredom and restlessness that permeate island life.

 

El Doctor, my community counterpart

And my own personal favorite? My neighbor Lidis is more often called Ñaña (“Older sister”; it sounds like “Nya Nya”). I just love to say that name!

Oh, and as for me? I just go by “Mike”.