A story in a single word

Nicknames can be a story in a single word - sometimes bestowed by friends, family, or colleagues, and sometimes self-applied in an effort to convey a certain image. Think, for example, of an episode of Big Bang Theory called The Friendship Contraction - Wolowitz tries to inveigle the other astronauts into choosing "Rocket Man" but gets stuck with "Fruit Loops"

At a writer's seminar recently a young woman from the Lower Mountains mentioned recent conflict between groups of young people in the town square.  She referred to them using a term the rest of us had not previously encountered.  It sounded like "Eshays" and prompted a round of puzzled requests for repetition and explanation.

When we learned that it was a form of "gang" terminology that some of the youngsters were appropriating from American "gangsta" movies, and that it had some sort of Spanish etymology, an online search (oh, the wonders of modern technology!) soon filled in the gaps in our knowledge.

It derives from the Spanish phoneme "esse" that represents the letter "S" and is related to the term Surenos, in turn derived from Southern Californian crime gangs with a relationship to Mexican "Mafia" groups involved in drug and weapons trade in and out of the USofA.

"Eshays" has also come to be simply a term for a young man, thus a Spanish version of "Man" "Bro" or "Dude"

Yet, for the people who have taken to using it about themselves it is meant to convey to the wider world an image, an impression, a story about who they are, and how they should be treated or regarded.

Nicknames can be a remarkably concise way of describing a person, when the listeners share the cultural heritage of the narrator.  Without such sharing, the possibilities for confusion are immense - consider the practice, in Australia, in years gone by, of calling redheads "blue" or "bluey" and black-haired men "snow" or "snowy"

Some are in-jokes, reminding listeners who are in the know of some particular moment in the history of the recipient and his/her friends.  In years gone by I had a large collection of nicknames that were bestowed upon me by various friends and colleagues.  Someone asked me if I found the plethora of alternative names annoying or confusing - in fact, it helped me work out which face in the crowd was calling for my attention.  Nicknames can add to the reader's grasp of the type and history of a character, if chosen wisely.

What about pet names?  The consensus seems to be that pet names are used by only one person, who is in a relationship - familial or romantic - with the character, so tagging a character with one during dialogue can be a succinct way of indicating the relationship to the reader.  An article in the Scientific American goes into some detail on the subject.

How often should we add nicknames and pet names to the characters in a story?  Changes of name can confuse the reader, so it needs to be done well.  My cultural millieu is middle class Australian, post-World War II, so nicknames and informallity in conversations are a crucial part of social interactions - is it thus in other cultures? How do you go about choosing names for your characters?  Do you choose them before the story begins rolling along?  Do you find yourself wanting to change them later, as their personality develops over the course of the writing?

I have read of authors who have gone to enormous trouble to attach the "right" name to primary characters, hoping to infuse extra layers of meaning into the story.  I have encountered novels where that effort has paid off.  For my part, I have tended to randomly reach into the well of memory and pluck out a few names, holding each up against the character as so far planned, and discarding each until I find the one that seems to fit.  It is a haphazard approach and has sometimes  led to my having to carefully go through a draft, swapping out the initial moniker for something that fits better with the persona that has grown during the work.

Does it really matter?  In real life we are named by hopeful (or confused) parents long before any inkling of our character could possibly be detected by them. Would it be more realistic if authors adopted the same policy?