Nicknames

There was an obituary in today's paper for "Baldy" McGrane. He was 85. There was a picture of Baldy and it looked like he had a pretty good head of hair.
I didn't know Baldy, but the obituary got me thinking about nicknames. Growing up, many of the adult males I encountered had nicknames. My dad, who had a most unfortunate birthname, Ladislaus, became known early on as "Fatty", a name he carried for the rest of his life. I was always a little uncomfortable about all my little cousins calling my dad "Uncle Fatty", but he didn't seem to mind.
I had to call a lot of my Dad's friends by their nicknames - Chi-Chi, Did I, Rossi, Pepsi and FuFu - because for the longest time, those were the only names I knew them by.
Three of my Dad's brothers had nicknames, Husk, Ferk and Jay; three did not. His two sisters didn't have nicknames, but they married good names - Tarzan and Prof. (I was the only kid I knew who had an Uncle Tarzan.)
My Mom's family wasn't much into nicknames, except for brother Jay, but they made up for it through marriage. One sister married into a Croatian-Amererican family. Her husband was known to his family and friends as "Sheiky", although we didn't call him that. We did get to know his brothers as Duke and Footsie. He had an uncle who I thought had the coolest nickname "Bronco". It turns out his name was really "Branco" an honest-to-God Croatian name.
My mom's youngest brother may have hit the jackpot. When he married, he acquired brothers-in-law with a most wonderful collection of nicknames: Big Feet, Little Feet, Halfie and Pickles.
Today, it seems that the only people with nicknames are gangsters and musicians. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) none of my relatives and friends are on either of those career paths.