If you’re from around here, you don’t bat an eye when an insurance company president answers to Shorty, a major car dealer is dubbed Butch, Bubba is a funeral home executive, the mayor’s called Chipper and a software consultant is known far and wide as FoFo.
“We’ve got more nicknames than anywhere in the world,” said Pass Christian Mayor Chipper McDermott, citing constituents who go by Pole Cat, Black Cat, Whitey Cat, Tom Cat, Mustard and Hard Rock, among other colorful names. “It’s just the climate we live in.”
Often, Southern men are named for daddy but get their nicknames from mama.
Harold George Olsen Jr., director of economic development and planning for Bay St. Louis, said when he was born, “My mother said, ‘That’s probably not the handle you need to go out in life with,’ so she called me Buzzy.”
Sun Herald
8/31/9
Magnolia Tribune
