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There’s a nickname people have tried to give me a few times over the years. Ashworthy. I’ve never been fond of Ashworthy. I’ve never hated it and insisted people stop using it, but I’ve never been fond of it. And not just because as a nickname, it’s longer than the name it nicks, which goes against one of the main points of nicknames. In fact, one of my favorite nicknames of all time is Kevin Kevin Ashworth, as I was called by several lovely coworkers at Ab Initio Software in Lexington, Mass.

Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve never been fond of Ashworthy is that it’s not a name, it’s not a real thing, it just doesn’t exist. Or so I thought. This week I am reading the play Moonlight and Magnolias by Ron Hutchinson, which fancifully imagines how the screenplay for Gone With the Wind might have been created. The writer Ben Hecht is laughably unfamiliar with the big, famous book and must write a screenplay in just 5 days. At one point he gets the name Ashley Wilkes wrong and says Ashworthy. And there you have it. In print. The existence of Ashworthy.

Not that I want to be called that. Kevin is still fine. Kev is okay. K-dawg, K-Ash, Kevin Kevin Ashworth, dude. So many other things to call me first. Okay?