Photo by Cord Lowe
A name represents and identifies a person. In the Turks and Caicos Islands there are two aspects of your name that are important – your Surname and your Nickname. Surnames identify you as belonging to one of the traditional family groups and are also connected to one of the six main islands: Grand Turk, Salt Cay, South Caicos, Middle Caicos, North Caicos and Providenciales. Surnames carry a lot of weight in the islands. Some of the prominent surnames and their islands links are Stubbs, Pratt and Dean of Providenciales. Missick, Gardiner and Handfield of North Caicos. Hall, Forbes, Hamilton of Middle Caicos. Simmons, Been and Garland of Salt Cay. Clare, Malcolm, Saunders of South Caicos and William, Smith and Taylor of Grand Turk, just to name a few. Many elders on the various islands can riddle off your whole family tree just by hearing your surname and the name of your father or mother.
Nicknames in the TCI on the other hand are all about the person and not linked to a family group or any one of the islands. Almost everyone in the TCI has a nickname. Nicknames are awarded to and not chosen by the recipient and usually based on a person’s name, occupation, personality, lifestyle, social standing, physical characteristics or various attributes such the way you look, your complexation, features, how you speak or something you did. On a simplistic level, many nicknames are just an abbreviation of a person’s Christian and given name such as Dave from David, Sam from Samuel, Barbs from Barbara, Charlie from Charles and Danny from Daniel. However, some nicknames are born out or ridicule or putdowns so they can be offensive or derogatory.
In the Turks and Caicos nicknames are taken to a whole different level. They are often comical and darn right strange. There are many people in the community who are only known by their Nickname and it’s only when official documents are being drawn up or they pass away and a funeral program is being written that their real name comes to light.
Listed here are just over one hundred and fifty local Nicknames just to give you a taste of our Turks and Caicos Nickname culture but there are thousands and I can almost guarantee that even persons from the expatriate community eventually end with a local nickname if they live here long enough.
Please feel free to add to the Turks and Caicos Nickname data base by emailing your submission to ripsawmusic@gmail.com
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