Nicknames from Physical Characteristics

QUITE a number of nicknames are purely general, descriptive of height and build, and many are self-explanatory: Bigg, Lang or Long, Tall, Greet (great), High, Much or Muckle, 1 with the French Grand, Grant and the Scandinavian Storr (ON storr ‘big% whilst the lack of size is indicated by Little, Low, Short, Smale or Small, Murch ‘dwarf’ and the French Bass or Bassett, Curt, Court and the diminutives Curtin, Pettitt. Obesity and its opposite were natural subjects for comment: Fatt, Plump, Thick and Thynne, the East Anglian Craske ‘fat and lusty’, Gaunt, Lean, Meager, all ‘thin’, Lank ‘tall and thin’, with the French Grace, Grass ‘fat’ and the metaphorical Buss (OFr busse ‘cask’) and Barrell, used in the sixteenth century of ‘the ydell and barrell bealies of monkes’ and still common as a children’s nickname for ‘fatties’, 2 Spire, Sprigg, Stick and Twigg ‘tall, thin, slender’, with Scatchard, a derivative of ONFr escache ‘a stilt’. Scachard is a pejorative, a nickname for a long-legged bird like the heron, later applied to a man. To these we may add: Broad or Bradd, Straight, Round ‘rotund and plump’ and Bullett, a diminutive of OFr boule ‘round’. Physical defects are stigmatised in Cromb, Crumb (OE crumb ‘bent, crooked, stooping’), Crump (OE crump ‘bent), Crook (ON krokr ‘crooked’), Wrong (late OE wrang, also from ON, in the same sense) and Yapp (OE gēap tent’).