Giving your pipes personal names?

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bentbulldog

bentbulldog

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It might sound silly but I give a name to my pipes. :tongue:

In fact I name them after the dwarves in the hobbit and the fellowship in lotr, totaling 23, which is the max number of pipes I aim for (but never get to) . I didn't name all my old pipes as there were some that I just had around for show, but all the pipes that were in rotation were carefully given one of these names.

It adds a personal touch to the pipes and easier for me to remember them and who was my most recent fellow. it was hard when I had to sell them but now that I'm rebuilding, I'm starting to see the company getting closer to complete and hopefully I will never come to part ways again.

So out of curiosity, do any of you have a similar OCD? :lol:


BB
 
Hilarious man.

BB, I have a hard enough time keeping both of my kids names straight let alone the potential names of the 20+ pipes I own. So unless I was looking to drive myself completely nuts I simply refer to them as to how they are stamped or by Maker and shape - Peterson 302, Dunhill Shell Briar, Parker Poker etc... To me my pipes are just tools. Very enjoyable and aesthetically pleasing tools, but still tools nonetheless.
 
I like the idea of giving my pipes names but when i look at them none come to mind, i only have a few pipes so far. maybe when i have more variety they're characteristics will lend me some help.
 
Interesting idea. I suppose if I were to do that the Hobbit names and in the Fellowship of the Ring would be a good place to look. If I had a pipe that deserved the name Smaug, it probably wouldn't be around my collection for long. We had a cat we called "Bilbo" but he did not live up to his name. It's hard to conceive of a name that could top Dunhill, or Bartline, or Charatan, or Castello. Of course if you have quite a few Dunhills and they are all bents then a personal name just might make a lot of sense.
 
It started when I got my Peterson lestrade xl23.Its such a chunky pipe and when I smoked it, I thought of Samwise Gamgee. So I kept the name and started naming my other pipes and choosing future pipes I kept that in mind. The hobbit didn't come out yet so I would choose the dwarf names by what sounded or looked appropriate for the pipe. My Brebbia 601 author is called Bombur.
 
I can see naming pipes, and occasionally I do, but they have to earn them somehow...some characteristic that sets them apart from the rest; an odd quirk or a physical descriptor. For example, a pipe you love the taste and look of that sometimes gets a little wet being called "Soupy," or one of my favorite Peterson pipes that's smaller than the rest I affectionately call "Dinky." One of my first pipes is "The Danish Thrift," because it had no maker name on it.

I don't strain myself to name my pipes otherwise. They're good friends, but they're also Zen enough not to need special monikers and titles to make them feel as if they belong, they just keep going as they do...thus teaching me something along the way, somehow, I suppose. :lol:

8)
 
https://www.brothersofbriar.com/t1097-naming-pipes?highlight=names#13287

As first for ones same writing again....

It looks like I'm the oddball here as I do give nicknames to my favorite or special pipes. I never thought of them as being masculine or feminine, however. I tend to give them names representative of the qualities I like in them. Here are some I've given nicknames and the reasons.

Rocheleau volcano (A-47) named "Merlin" because it's never gurgled or needed a pipe cleaner during a smoke and has never had to be reamed. That's now over 300 smokes too. It's not finicky about tobaccos but it's been dedicated to McConnell's Scottish Cake for several years.

Brissett full bent egg first named "Brissett hand grenade" as that's what it felt like in my hand but later renamed (due to comments from the maker) to "Brissett Georgia traveler" as I always smoke it while traveling because it never needs a pipe cleaner during a smoke and because of its shape and size there are several places in my truck I can put it down securely.

Rad Davis squashed tomato is named the "BLT" for "best little tomato" because it always provides an excellent dry smoke especially with McB Navy Flake.

Balleby bent apple is named "The Floater" because of its extra light weight and seemingly floats whether in hand or mouth. It also provides an excellent smoke.

Heeschen Bent "P" is named the "Rascal" because it does things it shouldn't just by looking at it. It's a sitter/rocker though it has no flat bottom like a poker, it's well balanced and is easy to clench though it looks bowl heavy and provides a cool, dry smoke all the way to the bottom of the bowl.

Big Ben Barbados bulldog is named "FBP" for "frost bit preventer" which it did for my nose on its first trip to Montana in sub-zero degree weather with 35 to 40 mile an hour winds. It's also a good hand warmer. It provides an excellent dry smoke with McB Navy Flake.

Jim
 
I call my Savinelli Silver "kukkopilli" - a word referring to a bird-shaped whistle made of clay, often translated as "ocarina" in English but it's not really the same thing. You see, this pipe has an annoying tendency to whistle sometimes. So, when one night I was smoking it after quite a many drinks, and it started to whistle, I complained about this to my brother and wondered why it bothered me so much. To which he, after taking a contemplative sip from his own pipe, answered, with a very serious tone: "Well it's not a goddamn ocarina." After that, the name kinda stuck. :lol:
 
BJ :

It shouldn't be that hard to send your bird-whistler to a competent pipemaker for a whistlectomy that would improve the way it smokes and tastes.

Just sayin' 8)

:face:
 
When I had six they all had names. But when I'm in my 20s I gave up now it's the manufacturer and shape/finish, Peterson Claddagh or Luciano Bulldog
 
Personal names for pipes? What a novel idea! Should come in handy, as I often speak to my pipes--and they speak to me, when alone and the lights are low. I like to dress them in silly costumes if they behave. Gives me a chuckle.
 
Yak":bqd6kzb8 said:
BJ :

It shouldn't be that hard to send your bird-whistler to a competent pipemaker for a whistlectomy that would improve the way it smokes and tastes.

Just sayin' 8)

:face:
Click to expand...
Whistling is not always the sign of a bad-performing pipe. With the chamfering job I do on the tenons, they all have a resonant whistle at a specific airflow, kind of a higher-pitched tone. It's a side-effect, and truthfully is a great way to get an "alarm" if the pipe is being puffed too anxiously. Works great in social situations for that reason.

8)
 
"whistlectomy" :lol:

Mmm, the pipe Kukkopilli smokes just fine, but sometimes it whistles. Not always.

Oh, and I call a Lorenzo of mine "törky-Lorenzo" (filth-Lorenzo), because I smoke just about anything in it, and treat it otherwise a little badly too... even if the poor thing doesn't deserve that. :oops:

But other than those two, no nicknames. I am not very good at naming things anyway. I hate naming paintings, or characters in a story etc. Just something I'm not that good at.
 
For whatever it may be worth, when the now big-time Danes were pipemaking adolescents growing into big time stature, there was a pretty widely circulated (that makes it True. Right ?) account of them testing pipes this way as an airway rightness check.

The ones that didn't pass they called "clarinets."

:face:
 
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