If you clicked because you thought I started writing about football, you got baited and you took the bait. The names in the title are nicknames I’ve answered to through out the course of my life. So no, this is not sports talk. It’s nicky talk. Lol
I’m not a big fan of nicknames. As such, I didn’t give myself a nickname growing up like many other kids did. I stuck to my real name - Hamza. That didn’t stop my friends from naming me though.
The thing about nicknames is that they arise from situations or have some sort of stories backing them. At least that’s how it’s always happened in my case.
The first one I got was because of my passion for football. Believe it or not, I knew my way around a ball back in the day. Still do, actually, I’m just no longer passionate about it.
When I just started playing ball on the streets, I was called Lampard by my team mates because of how slick I was with the ball. Yhp, this Hamza. I shit you not.
Somewhere around JHS, I joined a football team in my neighborhood and the coach named me Hazard over there because of the same reasons as before. I wasn’t a goal scorer, but I was mid-field general. Man talking about it reminds me of the good ol’ days.
The people you hear still calling me Lampard or Hazard are people who knew me from my childhood but got disconnected from me after I went to SHS because the two football nicknames died out after I gave up ball in SHS.
In my primary school days, some of my friends did some reverse engineering and came up with a weird nickname for me - Zaham. It’s a re-arrangement of the letters of my name (Hamza) and it means fish in my local language. However, this didn’t stick as it had no story behind it. And if you know anything about nicknames, you know that the nicknames with some sort story stick
the most.
I’m even called Shehu Hamza by some people in my neighborhood because of the religious story of my name and because I was a big sheikh back then. Lol
Out of all the nicknames I’ve had growing up though, Zology is my favorite nickname. Not Zoology as in the science. Zology. One O. And it’s weird because there’s no profound story to it.
A lot of people find it when I mention that Zology is a nickname for everyone called Hamza. I’m not sure how this came to be, or if other names have something like this, but this is how I’ve always known it.
If you meet me around friends, there’s a good chance you won’t hear my name itself. My friends call me Zology. My friends in the offline world. My friends in the Neoxian City have adapted it Zo. Kind of an abbreviation if the full form of the nickname.
Zology is probably the most popular nickname I’m addressed by because that’s what a lot of people who don’t know me on a personal level enough to know my real name call me. And I like it. It’s got a nice ring to it.
All pictures are mine