i.e. did nick name people or did people call nick nick?

Well not to ruin a good time in the shower but neither. In middle English an "eke name" meant "another name". Over time it became a neke name, and from there a nickname.

My nuncle has an eke name.

The n from "an" transferring to the other word is always amusing to me and what's more amusing is that it's not the only time this has happened (a napron -> an apron)

an orange

a norange

Great question by OP, and a great answer here.

funny that we went full circle with "aka"

A.K.A. is an initialism for "also known as". No relation.

yeah i mean i just thought it was funny that people used eke name before, to mean "another name" and now we use aka to mean "also known as"

Fair enough.

Mo-nik-er

Nik-name

Nickname

It’s just something your father thought up while he was shaving.

BDYKWIATTTYRN?

At one point i thought "enlies" was a word because of how i was hearing the phrase "therein lies the problem." I was hearing it as "there enlies the problem".

It was originally “knickerbocker” name but got shortened over time

I’ll take no further questions

Works the other way too. (an otch -> a notch)

If you want the real answer, from Middle English neke name, alteration (due to a rebracketing of an ekename as a nekename) of earlier ekename (“nickname”), from eke (“additional”) + name.

I once convinced a co-worker that the opposite was true for napkin, that they were apkins before.

Also told him pockets were pock-ettes and pants used to have giant pocks that hung outside like saddlebags.

I thought it was a name somebody nicked (appropriated) and placed on somebody else.

67 rule btw

is moniker called moniker because it's a NIcK name or is nickname named after moniker?

Now it’s at 69.

What if Dick had been a popular name…

That's surprisingly not that far off, modern pockets evolved from bags tied to belts and the word comes from "poke", meaning pouch.

Who's Monica? Is she a friend of Nick?

Robwords (or was it Words Unravelled?) explained that one

another name... "an other" name

History of English podcast, mother of all etymology tangents. Highly recommended.

Crazy that I got this without trying.