nickname: [14] A nickname is etymologically an ‘additional name’. The word was originally ekename, whose eke ‘addition’ was a derivative of the verb eke (as in ‘eke out’). But by the 15th century an ekename was becoming misinterpreted as a nekename – hence nickname (the same process produced newt [15] from ewt, ancestor of modern English eft ‘newt’, and the reverse happened to adder, apron, and umpire). => eke[nickname etymology, nickname origin, 英语词源]