Every nickname I've ever been called

Some redheads collect stamps. We collect nicknames. None of us asked for them, and most of them came from people who thought they were being very original.

The classics

• Carrot top
• Ginger snap
• Pumpkin
• Duracell (a British classic, because of the copper-top battery)
• Red, just Red, like it's my name

The "compliments"

• Little Mermaid, Ariel, Princess Merida
• Jessica Rabbit
• Weasley, from every Harry Potter fan I've ever met

Even fiction knows it hurts

In Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908, Anne Shirley calls her red hair her "lifelong sorrow". When a boy at school calls her "Carrots", she breaks her slate over his head. More than a century later, redhead readers still quote that scene, because it's exactly how it feels.

The ones that stung

This isn't just about sensitive feelings. In a 2014 survey of 1,742 people by psychology student Kevin O'Regan at University College Cork, over 90% of red-haired men and 87% of red-haired women said they had been bullied because of their hair. Among people without red hair, only 5 to 10% said the same. The study also linked this kind of bullying, and negative portrayals in movies and cartoons, to anxiety and depression.

The one I kept

Fox. Someone once said I had fox hair, and it was the first nickname that felt like a compliment. Clever, wild, a bit mysterious. That one I took with me.

They called me every name in the book. I picked my own.