For 15th-century Florentine artist Paolo di Dono, the bird was the word. He loved feathered creatures so much that he acquired the nickname "Uccello" ("bird").

The Italian painter Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, born in 1445, inherited his older brother's nickname "Botticelli," which meant "little barrel." Similarly, the 16th-century Italian painter Jacopo Robusti was tinted with "Tintoretto" ("the little dyer") because his father was a "tintore" (silk dyer).

And would Domenikos Theotokopoulos have been as famous without the nickname "El Greco" ("The Greek")?

During the 1950s, Jackson Pollock, the abstract expressionist painter who poured and splashed paint on the canvas, was labeled "Jack the Dripper."

But as Andrew Delahunty demonstrates in his "Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames" (Oxford University Press, $25), those who daub aren't the only ones dubbed. Can you provide the real names behind the nicknames of these historical figures?:

No. 1: Butch Cassidy No. 2: Boy Orator of the Platte No. 3: Evita No. 4: Old Rough and Ready No. 5: Young Hickory No. 6: The Little Giant No. 7: The King of Spades No. 8: Stonewall No. 9: Tippecanoe No. 10: Calamity Jane

Answers and Explanations:

No. 1: The outlaw Robert Leroy Parker once worked as a butcher.

No. 2: William Jennings Bryan, the silver-tongued Congressman who represented the Platte River region of Nebraska, was only 36 when he ran for president in 1896.

No. 3: Argentinian politician Maria Eva Duarte de Peron was popularly known by this variation of her middle name.

No. 4: Zachary Taylor's informal dress and eagerness to fight earned him this sobriquet during the Seminole Indian War.

No. 5: James K. Polk was a protege of "Old Hickory," Andrew Jackson.

No. 6: Though barely five feet tall, U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas loomed large in antebellum politics.

No. 7: Confederate General Robert E. Lee was constantly ordering his soldiers to dig trenches.

No. 8: When Barnard Bee saw the troops of fellow Confederate general Thomas Jackson at the first battle of Bull Run, he said, "There is Jackson with his Virginians, standing like a stone wall." (It's never been clear whether Bee was trumpeting Jackson's strength or trashing the immobility of his troops.)

No. 9: William Henry Harrison defeated the Shawnee Indians in a battle at Tippecanoe Creek in Indiana.

No. 10: The skilled shooter and horsewoman Martha Jane Burke was said to bring calamity to any man who courted her.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

Photo credit: Tim Mossholder at Unsplash