Gross Nicknames!

Maybe you think you've had a bad nickname. Please! My name is BART. Guess what that rhymes with?

Hey, this reminds me that when famous scientist Charles Darwin was a kid, he was so interested in chemistry, his friends nicknamed him “Gas.” Downer!

The great artist Michelangelo didn't have a bad nickname. Why would he? This is the guy who painted a masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel in 1541. It was awesome! A classic! Incredible!

But even so, some people had a problem with the painting. See, “The Last Judgment” was a big painting with lots of people… and over three-dozen of the men shown in the masterpiece were naked. Yikes! So another artist was picked to paint underwear. Lots and lots of underwear.

The lucky person picked for the job was Danela da Volterra. But he is better known today for his nickname of Il Braghettone: "The Underwear Man".

Ooh, and here's another unfortunate nickname: In World War II, the Japanese admiral Shigetaro Shimada was called: “Droopy Drawers” (Yurufun)!

The Chinese have some funny nicknames, too. For example, China Central TV is headquartered in an unusual skyscraper. Its owners wanted to nickname the building Zhi chuan ("knowledge window"). This was probably a bad idea, since that sounds a lot like the Chinese word for “hemorrhoid” (Zhi chuang).

But before that nickname could get going, a Chinese taxi driver started calling it dà kùcha: “Big Underwear”. And that’s the nickname that’s stuck!


BONUS: The best, grossest nickname might be right here.