Hi all! Today, I discovered Throwback Thursday. Well, I had heard of it before, but always assumed it was an image-based blog hop, as this is what the term usually means. Not so in this case. Lauren and Maggie’s Throwback Thursday allows us to write a post taking a stroll down memory lane. I’m pretty sure photos are allowed, but the main focus seems on writing. Today’s topic is nicknames.
I have had many nicknames throughout my life. Some are derived from my name. For example, many people simply abbreviate “Astrid” to “As” and my spouse and in-laws then add the commonly-Dutch “-ie” suffix for “little”, so my nickname becomes “Assie”.
Then there are these nicknames that are based on some letters out of my name but not many. An example is the Dutch word “asbak” (which translates to “ashtray)”. I hate that nickname with a vengeance.
Another one is “Assepoester”. This is the Dutch name for Cinderella in the fairytale. I don’t like the Dutch nickname, but I for one do relate to Cinderella, particularly to the feeling of having to be transformed by a fairy (ie. put on a mask) in order to be acceptable as I am.
For this reason, I sometimes still use Cinderella as my nickname. That is, I do so when referring to myself and my multiple alter personalities (dissociative identities) as a system. Usually, I refer to the collective as Astridetal, as in my blog’s URL, but at one point we felt somehow like we needed a collective name that didn’t claim that Astrid was the “owner” of everyone else. So Cinderella System was born!
Did or do you have any interesting nicknames?
A Multitude of Musings 
Cinderella is a pretty cute nickname!
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Thank you. Yes, it is particularly as is, in English. In Dutch, not really.
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Thank you for joining in. I certainly understand not wanting to be referred to as an ashtray. The Cinderella system seems to fulfill the need of the collective identity. I applaud your finding something that works for you.
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Thank you so much. I never even thought of how stupid Ashtray really sounds until I translated the Dutch into English.
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I like your nicknames, the cinderella system is a nice name! I love it! Xo
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Thank you so much! I like it too.
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Hello, Astrid – it is so nice to have you join us in the challenge this week. We post a different topic every Thursday so maybe you will join us again. You have some interesting nicknames, but I do like Cinderella best of all (not ashtray!) We all seem to go through transformations at some point in our lives just to get people to see and accept us for who we are.
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Thanks so much for commenting. Originally, I didn’t like Assepoester much better than Ashtray, but I love how I reclaimed it.
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Yes to reclaiming!
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