If you’ve surfed for any length of time, you may have noticed one way in which surfing is exactly like any other sport or sub culture worldwide. Surfers’ tendency to label people, places and things with monikers.
Perhaps this idiosyncrasy is most clearly illustrated with the Ozzies. Indeed, who calls those wannabe-laidback-but-in-reality-cannot-cope-without-severely-rigid-structures “Australians”? Unless of course you’re a far left wing zealot demanding some of your countrymen emigrate to join the Australians? Anyhow, Australia across its sporting and lifestyle spectrum seems to adopt nicknames the quickest. Their main method seems to be thoroughly dull variants on one’s surname. If for instance, you have a monosyllabic surname such as the legendary cricketer Shane Warne’s, your nickname will invariably become something unbearably clever like “Warno.”
The converse is true when it comes to more complex surnames such as Occhilupo. In the case of an Australian surname with more than two syllables, your moniker will be “Occy”. In case nobody got that – your surname is simply shortened to create your nickname. Now, this is where it gets really weird for the Australians. Although we’re in no way claiming we have more imagination than our Antipodean cousins – when you have world champion surfers such as Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson, your surname, whether two syllables or three – becomes the inane “Fanno” or “Parko”. I mean, I really dig Mick Fanning – and maybe it’s a respect thing, but why not call him “Fanny”?
Yanks. See? That’s a nickname.
The Americans are even worse when it comes when it comes to creative nicknames. ‘Coz, they simply seem to have none. Although Jamie O Brien’s “JOB” is kinda cool, Trident schemes he more or less came up with it himself for his vlog. Nicknames have to be coined by someone other than the person themselves – or they don’t count as legitimate.
Kelly Slater, Tom Curren, Connor Coffin (jis– his actual name is cool enough not to require nicknames), Kolohe Andino, Carissa Moore, we dare you to find US surfers with nicknames.
This is where South Africans differ. However, as surfing isn’t as recognised a sport in this country as it is in Oz or even the States, we’ll need to use other sports’ heroes as examples. “The Beast”, “Gogga”, “Steyn Remover” – now there’s some imagination. Perhaps because we live in a country where poverty and violence is a real concern, we don’t waste our time coming up with kak nicknames like “Wilko”.
However, in South Africa in the surf lineups nationwide, foreigners may be confused by the nicknames given to them by the locals. “Doos”, “Naai”, “F***in’ Chop”, “****”, “****naai ****in’ Leaky hol ****in’ **** Doos” are just some of the charming ways we South Africans sometimes welcome visiting surfers to our shores.
Trident won’t be commenting on the Brazilians, or surfers from countries who speak something other than English. Such a pity ‘coz for all we know, these guys could have conjured up nicknames like “Lazy”, “Drippy”, “Bum Mongrel”, “Piss Burglar”, “Lord Finger-breath”, “Uncle Stank-burger” and the like. We’ll never know, but perhaps we should take up Portuguese or French. Heaven knows, other countries would be horrified if they understood Afrikaans.
Even surf breaks have nicknames of nicknames.
And it’s not just people who have nicknames. Spots across the country – and the world for that matter – have their own monikers. Nobody calls Supertubes Supertubes anymore. No. It’s Supers.
The Banzai Pipeline. Huh?! To anyone these days, that sounds like a brand of drug-addicted Japanese toy robots.
We feel this topic needs to be revisited sometime soon in the near future. There is no way on earth Trident is done ripping into lame nicknames just yet.
