"Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable." - Wacky Bill

There really aren't any hard-and-fast rules or even strong guidelines for this. Some people assign nicknames to almost everyone they know, some people object to all nicknames regardless of who gives them. "Have you ever felt closer to someone because they assigned you a nickname?" For the longest time, my boss's toddler-aged daughter kept forgetting who I was and thus she would act surprised and fearful whenever she visited her dad at work and saw me sitting in my office. She also couldn't master pronouncing my name, no matter how many times her father and mother tried to coach her to say hello, goodbye, or thank you to me. But she knew and liked my coworker, George, and apparently asked her father every morning, "Papa go to work and see George?" Well, a few months ago, apparently this became, "Papa go to work, see George and Georgealynn?" Close enough. :) So now when my boss first comes in, he greets us with, "Good morning, George. Good morning, Georgealynn." And I feel more included/acknowledged as part of the team than I did before.

I don't call people by nicknames unless I hear their friends doing it. I usually ask if they care/prefer to be called something else if it's more than a casual encounter. I don't think it's really ever right to just assign. If anything, you could ask, "hey, can I call you J?" This stems from a dislike of having a name that's very different, but only two syllables, that for some reason people insist in making up stupid nicknames for. I like the one letter thing OK though. I've never felt closer to someone from having a nickname. I've felt more important or less important though.

I give people nicknames quite a bit, because it's a fun way to bond with someone. The nickname can come up at any time, for any reason, in my mind. I like getting a nickname if it's coming from someone with good intentions. Some weird, slimy people use nicknames as a shorthanded way of feigning familiarity. That's weird. I tend not to trust people who give me nicknames within a short period of meeting me...probably because it seems like they're trying to push the relationship along faster than it would naturally develop. That said, if I meet someone and get along with them and they give me a nickname out of nowhere I will most likely find it charming. My general rules on nicknames: - I will state at some point, "I'm going to call you [nickname] now." If they express displeasure or seem to hate it, I never use it again. If they ask me to stop using it at any point, I never use it again. Unless they are the type of person for whom a little ball busting is in order. Use your best judgment. No one wants to be the "nickname guy". Some people don't like nicknames that much - there's some nuance in it. For example, my first name is one that has what I consider the worst shortened nickname - and the only people who ever use it repeatedly are assholes (a lot of my high school teachers fit into that category, no surprise). Nicknames like that are dumb - not everyone has a monosyllabic name, and that's ok. Likewise if someone's given a nickname for it being too "ethnic/hard to pronounce/etc", that's gross. I think nicknames are best used coming out of a place of fondness and in order to share something unique to your relationship with one person or within a group of people. As with most things, there aren't hard and fast rules so long as you mean well and don't be an asshole about it.

I think one can have a personality that pulls it off more successfully than others. I'm not really a permanent nickname user, but I get in silly moods where I just call people something other than their name—anything other than their name—just for the hell of it. People seem to enjoy it, but the key is I'm not really naming them that for all time, just for the moment. One day I called everyone T-pain. They called me T-pain. We were all T-pain. You kind of have to be careful about people in grumpy moods with that strategy, though. Or, depending on how well you know them, you may want to step it up just to be annoying when they're in a grumpy mood. Heh. You kind of also have to watch out for people who are trying not to be dicks, but don't really like it, and not be that guy, who cracks himself up but drives everyone else nuts. (Which is true for would-be permanent nickname using, too.) Are you asking because you want to name someone something, or because someones done that to you and you don't like it? The "look of disapproval" the first time they call you something you don't like usually works. Which would make me laugh even more when I got to say, "all right, T-Pain, T-Pain, T-Pain, foursentences, and T-Pain: You're all on the 737 project today."

I don't like it when people start referring to me by a different name than they usually use. My nicknames have actually grown in such a way that certain groups of people only know me by a certain name and I get weirded out when those lines get crossed. I'm also a control freak. When someone uses a different name than I'm accustomed to I'll usually say something kinda jokingly along the lines of, "oh hell no, did you just call me _____?" or "never call me that again... ever. never." or "that sounds weird when you say it..." I don't get offended or angry... it's just awkward. My extended family all know me by one name and when someone unrelated uses that name it's almost like they're trying to force themselves into my family. On the other hand, if my cousin introduces me to their fiance using my extended family name then it's almost like, "welcome to the family". During my drunk, slutty college years I picked up a nickname and only friends from college who know me as a slutty drunk use that name... and if my co-workers started calling me by that name I'd wonder if they had found my "artistic" photos... or if my video surfaced. When someone tries to make up a nickname it's pretty much, "Huh? That's not my name..." The only times I've embraced new nicknames are when they were from someone who I had recently met AND looked up to/admired... OR if it was someone who I had a thing for. In these scenarios I've definitely felt closer to them... but, only because I wanted to feel closer to them.

Does anybody else think that the OP's numbers 1 and 4x are conflicting?

Nicknames irritate me when they make no sense. Someone in my office insists on calling me by the first letter of my LAST name, which, wtf. It takes just as much effort to say "liz" as it does to say one letter. Even worse, that one letter is the first letter of the first name of two other people in my office, so no one ever knows who the hell she is talking to when she shouts it across the room. Hell, I'd be more likely to respond to her if she was like "OI BITCH" because at least that has logical basis in reality. tl;dr nicknames need to make some kind of goddamn sense.

It doesn't have to be that complicated. Most people will correct you right off the bat if you start calling them a nickname they're unfond of, and chances are they've heard it often enough that you'll get a many-speech saying as much and that's it. This isn't true. Some people are just not forward enough to correct someone. One of my ex's named Christopher hated to be called Chris. He never, ever corrected anyone. I think the best protocol would be to ask someone what they prefer to be called.

People love to nickname me. One of my supervisors calls me Sarah J. because my name is like that of the woman who is married to Matthew Broderick, and I don't like her, and I made the tactical error of letting him know that. Sigh. My MeFi username was something people just started calling me and I thought it was funny (I have a high degree of attachment to my "whole, entire" name, so getting all four parts in, albeit abbreviated, when people address me is nice.) Meanwhile, my mom's been trying to call me "Sare" for twenty years and it never works. She decided, after deliberately giving all of her kids "nickname proof" names, that she wanted to give me, in fifth grade at that point, a nickname. Yeah, no. In some cases, at least, I don't think any pattern of rules can be detected. (My boss is not flirting with me.)