nickname

nouns

a familiar name for a person (often a shortened version of a person's given name)
"Joe's mother would not use his nickname and always called him Joseph"; "Henry's nickname was Slim"
byname, cognomen, moniker, nickname, sobriquet, soubriquet
a descriptive name for a place or thing
"the nickname for the U.S. Constitution is `Old Ironsides'"
nickname
is a type of (narrower)
a language unit by which a person or thing is known
"his name really is George Washington"; "those are two names for the same thing"
name

verbs

give a nickname to
dub, nickname