Nicknames

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185618

Geoff:
> So, I would suggest that "Snivellus" and "HBP" and any other
unrevealed names were indeed nicknames. QED.

Carol:

Not QED. Just IYO (in your opinion). But it appears that the only
point we now disagree on is whether "Snivellus," used by just two
people to our knowledge, constitutes a nickname. It's more like the
opposite of a pet name. Real-life example: suppose that a young mother
addressed her spiky-haired baby boy as "Fraggle." Does that make
"Fraggle" his nickname? No one else used it and he never answered to
it. (she stopped using it when he was about two, possibly to avoid
confusing the poor child.)

At any rate, in your opinion, "Snivellus" is a nickname. In mine, it's
just a nasty epithet used by two bullies. Harry defines "nickname" as
"what my friends call me," to which Snape, not questioning that
definition, responds, "I know what a nickname is." By that definition,
which I also take to be JKR's own, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and
Prongs would be nicknames, acknowledged and answered to and even used
by their owners as makers of the Marauder's Map. Severus Snape,
however, did not himself use "Snivellus" nor respond to it nor
acknowledge it in any way. (He referred to *himself* as the Half-Blood
Prince, but unless his friends called him, say, "Prince" (or "the
Prince in conversation, as Harry did), that wouldn't have been a
nickname, either, more of a self-selected epithet.

For the record, here's the definition of "epithet" from
Merriam-Webster Online:

1 a: a characterizing word or phrase accompanying or occurring in
place of the name of a person or thing b: a disparaging or abusive
word or phrase

So "Half-Blood Prince" is an epithet in sense one and "Snivellus" is
an epithet in sense two.

Carol, who would have dropped the point had it not been for "QED"