Nicknames You Didn't Know These Celebrities Had

We call stars a lot of things: Rich, famous, gorgeous, powerful, influential. But it turns out that before they were famous, they were called a lot of other things... and some of them weren't so nice. These celebrities all had nicknames that were weird, mean, or, in some cases, pretty adorable.

Jennifer Lawrence's biggest nickname now is J-Law, but she used to go by "Nitro" when she was a kid, explaining to Conan O'Brien that she earned the moniker because she was "unstoppably and uncontrollably hyper."

"It was really embarrassing because every day I'd go to school and I'd be like, 'Today I'm going to get it together, I'm gonna be cool, I'm gonna be calm,'" she said. "And then I'd show up—I was like 13 and I peed my pants when I was in seventh grade. Or not peed my pants, I peed when I was sleeping. I wet the bed and I just thought, 'Who wets the bed when they're 13?' And so I couldn't wait to get to school and tell everybody. Then I went into the bleachers and was like, 'Everybody, I wet the bed last night,' thinking everybody was going to think that was so funny and cool and it was just silent."

Growing up, Iggy Azalea had two nicknames stemming from her height—she's 5'10"! One was a sweet dig from her grandfather, Stretch. The other was from jealous girls at school, who referred to the rapper as Olive Oyl.

Before there was Mimi, there was Mirage: Mariah Carey's high school nickname was Mirage because she was hardly ever in class! "I don't want to encourage anybody not to go to school or anything—far be it from me! But I liked school, I was more social in school than I was a student, and I always knew I was going to be a singer. It's my thing! I'm very lucky that I am, because who knows what I'd be doing? But I don't know—I had trouble getting up in the morning. I couldn't take getting to first period on time."

Drew Barrymore gave Bella Thorne a silly nickname on the set of their movie, Blended (2014). Barrymore explained to InStyle, "We would yap over hair and makeup forever, total girls. I feel like somewhere between a mom and a sister to her. I can't remember why I started calling her Pickle, but that's what she'll be for life." Thorne returned the favor and now calls Barrymore "Momma Pickle."

Singer and former member of The Wanted, Nathan Sykes, had a somewhat crazy nickname as a kid: Psycho (or, er, Syko). "My last name is Sykes and they just put an O on the end to make me sound cool," he told BBC, "but I wasn't."

Before he was the Man Of Steel, Henry Cavill was a chubby kid, which earned him a cruel, if quite simple, nickname from his classmates. "I was fat," he told Details. "I was Fat Cavill. It's definitely a s***ty nickname, but kids are cruel. Whatever—I was fat ... [In boarding school] I became an easy target. I bawled on the phone to my mom four times a day." Ouch! That's proof that bullying can be kryptonite for anybody.

Tom Hardy plays a bad boy in the movies, and he was a bad boy in his teens. He told GQ, "My nickname was something else back then. I think it was Weasel at the time. 'Cause I was a little s**t."

Blake Shelton's mom revealed to Men's Journal that she calls him Toad because he was always collecting frogs and other critters as a kid. "We had to drag him into the house at night," she said. "He loved all animals: grasshoppers, locusts, lizards, snakes, worms. One time I had a flyswatter and I killed a fly, and he cried."

Shelton also got another nickname later in life. Gwen Stefani's son, Apollo, had a tough time learning the letter L, so Shelton's been unofficially dubbed "Bwake" in their house.

Awww! When Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy was a baby, she preferred to "scoot" along with her butt instead of walking or crawling, earning her the nickname "Scooter." Too. Cute.