Some of our favourite pirates from popular culture have nicknames which sum up for us their physical or personal characteristics, "Yellowbeard" for example, or the "Dread Pirate Roberts" or "Dog Adams" from popular films. Treasure Island gave us "Long John Silver" and "Black Dog"; "Captain Hook" surely cannot be a real name, but must have been adopted by that man after he lost his hand to a crocodile, and Peter Duck tells us of the pirate "Black Jake".
Pirates of history too had nicknames or titles, the most famous of which must of course be "Blackbeard", the nickname of Edward Teach. "Black" Bart Roberts was perhaps so called for his callousness, while "Long Ben" Avery and "Calico" Jack Rackham are more descriptive physically. French buccaneers particularly seem to have been fond of giving nicknames to their leaders who had been wounded, such as "Jambe de Bois" (who had a wooden leg) and "Borgne-Fesse" ("half buttock", who had received an injury to his backside). |