Nicknames

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185581

 Geoff:
> Just in passing, it's p.539.
> 
> This doesn't deny the fact that the nickname exists. Someone has 
> to be the first person to coin it. And, as I said in earlier posts, 
> nicknames don't have to be flattering or friendly. Look at "Richard 
> Crookback" for King Richard III for example.
> 
> Hence a nickname can be "an undeserved taunt by an enemy."
>
Carol responds:
I don't see how you can refer to "the 'fact' that it exists" at that
point in the story. (SWM is another matter.)  The taunt (I refuse to
call it a nickname) did not exist until that moment. Sirius, who
*never saw Severus before that incident*, made it up on the spot.
Obviously, someone had to be the first to coin it, and *it happened at
that moment*. I don't understand why you're having so much trouble
understanding my point.

As for Richard III, no one in his lifetime called him by that
inaccurate and disparaging epithet. That false label was never a
nickname. If Richard III had a nickname, it was Dickon, but
shakespeare could have invented if. I don't know of any historical
evidence for the note pinned on Norfolks's tent in the Shakespeare
"history" play: "Jockey of Norfolk, be none too bold/ for Dickon, thy
master, is bought and sold." The treachery, however, was quite real,
and both Richard and Norfolk died at Bosworth Field.

Carol, noting that Sir Thomas More and Shakespeare, along with Hall
and Holinshed, are chiefly responsible for the myth of Richard III's
"deformity," which reflected their equally mythical view that he was a
murdering tyrant