At my chapter, a big sister gave a nickname to her little after initiation.

My chapter gives out nicknames. It's not a national thing though, just something our chapter decided to do. They are called sisternames, and we get them at initiation. They aren't part of the true ritual of initiation, but we get them during initiation. Your big sis is generally the one who comes up with it. Mine is Band Aid. =) After the New members get their names all the other girls go around and tell how they got their names. No one is supposed to know the story behind the names besides initiated sisters. I think it is a very cool thing, and fun to find out the stories behind everyone's name and get to learn a little bit more about them. We don't do much with them after that for some reason, (excepting some people put them on their paraphanalia) but I think we should use them more often.

My Nickname is "Buffins". My innitials are B.J. and one of the brothers thought that Buffins is NYC slang for a BJ, (If you ever heard anyone call a blow-job a Buffin then tell me 'cause I think he's makin' it up). His name was Risky-Dick (because he's RIchard and he's our Risk management chair) but he wasn't being safe and had his eye shot out playing air-soft (by one of our brothers who's a paramedic) so now we call him One-Eyed-Dick.

We don't make a point of giving our brothers nicknames... it just kinda happens. Makes us more familiar in a sense. So we have names like Spooner, Oven, Wang-Chung, and Turd Furgusin. etc.