You will probably never know unless you ask one of his relatives. Sometimes you can guess because the real name was simpy twisted (Tuture for Arthur, Titine for Léontine, Ninie for Eugénie, etc.). But many nicknames were also given during a person's childhood for affectionate or mocking reasons. Or it can be linked to a special event in someone's life, or their habits. Corinne Saucier mentions "Peille" for example, because, as a child, a woman would always answer "M'appeille..." when she was asked "Comment tu t'appelles ?" (what's your name?). She kept that nickname all her life. Someone was nicknamed "Qui-Qui" because the person was always using too many "qui" when she talked. "La vieille dindon" was the nickname of a woman who used this word instead of "dinde", etc. Saucier has listed hundreds of such mysterious nicknames in the Avoyelles Parish alone (Pea-pie, Pounout, Peck, Pi-toon, Poona, Porio, Poupoute, Poute, Putie, Poone, Poupou, Pioua... ).
I personally met a "Tinker" one day in Louisiana and someone explained to me that it was because she was compared to "Tinker Bell" when she was a child.
Interesting and funny question.

Christian

Yes, Christian....I have a cousin we called Poone (short for PaPoone), 'T , Cavan, Cadan, T'Mout, Bren, Blanc, Cot, etc. Mine was Chaulk. Many nick-names also came from mispronounced distortions of real names by younger siblings. Also, since there was such a diversity of languages down here, many names were misspelled and morphed into different names I think.

cb (aka Chaulk)

A wealth of pseudos for today's forums members.

In French of the south (Provence), the word “pitchoun” or “pitchoune” want to tell small or baby, for a child.
It‘s maybe an explanation.

Marc.

Or maybe from French pronouncing of "pigeon" ?
(the word is the same in English and French)

"Pigeon", curious nickname, but why not ?
In french "pigeon", except the bird, is a kind of "couillon" !!

Marc.